One fine day

The said Saturday started for me at 6 in the morning. I was in a small motel on the side-streets of suburban Chengdu, in Sichuan province, China. I made myself coffee, and drank it while watching the local news channel.

I had arrived in China 2 nights prior, for a conference held in one of the universities of Chengdu. I had arrived in the afternoon, just missing lunch and just one session away from my own presentation. Having gotten no sleep on the plane, thinking was hard, but presentation itself went fairly well regardless.

I now walked out of my room - fully dressed, with a spare shirt and a small bottle of water in my backpack. Once downstairs, I found two cars and a closed garage door waiting for me where there had been the entrance the day before.

The motel, or "farmer home" as locals seemed to call it in english, was pointed to me by the tourist information desk at the railway station in that same suburb, where I had landed just the day before with all my belongings. I went there with a fairly clear idea on what I wanted to do but with a comparably vague understanding of how to accomplish it all. Finding a place to stay was a top priority, however, and despite my fears, the tourist information people spoke enough english to understand my needs and offer a solution to them, even being nice enough to take me to the motel by their car (probably after figuring out that explaining would take longer).



After standing around the closed inner courtyard crowded by the two cars, I finally decided to start knocking at doors. Thankfully, the first one I tried turned out to be right and the administrator helpfully unlocked the door and let me out. I now started walking south, along a path I already knew from the day before.

I had arrived in the late afternoon, with too little time to go sightseeing before it went dark. Since I had nothing else to do, however, I just started walking around the town, eventually stumbling to the path lined with red flags. Following it, I found myself at the place I did not intend to go, and had to turn back (as it was closed anyways). The path itself was scenic enough, however, and the walk through the Chinese suburbia was also an experience in and of itself.



This day I had plans for, however, and they involved me getting to the mountain as quickly as possible. I walked along the main road, and at some point a riksha driver noticed me. I showed him the direction I wanted to go and five fingers. He nodded and I jumped in.

If there is one thing that seems to be hard to find in China, it is a taxi driver that offers a foreigner a fair price. While the storekeepers seemed honest in asking the same price of me and their compatriots, the drivers always wanted to cheat, one way or the other. The first I encountered refused to give me enough change. Another refused to start the meter and just demanded his (3 times higher) price. In some cases, I had to let it go. In others, I tried to find someone who would cheat me less. The 5 yuan I offered the riksha driver was a slight overestimation, but I did not want to start my day with a bad experience of haggling over half an euro.

It was 7.10 and I was at the base of the mountain. I walked to the ticket office, handed them the money and walked through the gate, showing them the recently acquired piece of paper. They let me pass, and I was now free to roam the Qingcheng mountain complex.



While still in Estonia, I had made plans to couch-surf with a local. Sadly, while I was on the plane, she had sent an e-mail saying she would not be joining me, leaving me to fill the weekend on myown. After googling Chengdu and checking the wikitravel page with an eye for scenic hiking trails and any mention of mountains, Qingchengshan seemed like a good choice. I decided to go for it, and informed the local couch-surfer about it too. She thought she might be joining me there for a daytrip, so I dropped further research. Little did I know she would again cancel the plans, leaving me alone in a time where I also had no Internet access to do further research. She reassured me that I would figure it out somehow, and although the outlook for it seemed bleak (as english-speakers are near-impossible to find, and signs and place-names are ofen only in Chinese), I nevertheless had decided to give it a try.

I was now at the mounntain and slowly but surely started making my way towards the top. The mountaintop temple was 1260 m high, and I was resolved to walk the path before the tourist hordes had time to catch up with me.



If it was one thing my previous trip to China (Shanghai, 2008) taught me, it is that unless you start early in the morning, you will get nothing of the serene tranquility often touted in the advertisments, as the crowds catch up with you. And by crowds, I do not mean the quiet, reserved, north european crowds, but chinese crowds, that walk around with portable radios at maximum setting and yell at friends they notice 50 m away. Not that I am judgemental of differences - it is just sometimes they can be f****ng annoying.

Walking through one temple after another, my mind becomes increasingly clean and serene. Gone are the thoughts of everyday drudgery. The mountains are breathtakingly beautiful - both in a figurative and literal sense, as the air becomes increasingly thin as I ascend one staircase after the next.



What is not quite gone is the fear of heights, however. Despite being drawn to the mountains, and always looking to climb one whenever I travel (be it Australia, Bulgaria or now, China), the fear of possibly slipping and falling is always felt. First time in Australia, I came pretty close, and I am not looking to repeat the experience, and the falling rain made me even more careful.



After countless pavilions, I was finally nearing the summit. Walking up one of the lonlier stairs, I saw a cleaner walk past and utter "Ni Hao" to me. It took me a few seconds to remmember that this was "hello", and I answered hastily, but he had by that point walked past me so I doubt he managed to hear me.

Chinese is a tonal language, which means that the same phoneme can have different meanings depending on whether it is said in a forceful, rising or lowering way. As to how big the differences can be: ma, in one tonation is "mother" while in another, it stands for a horse. This tonality has two implications. Firstly, Chinese can often sound like arguing to westerners, even when two people are having a perfectly civil discussion. Secondly, trying to learn even the most basic niceties can be hard if not near impossible, as non-mandarin speakers are not used to controlling their tone on every syllable. Thank you (xie xie, both in the forceful intonation) seems simple enough, but I still heared chinese comment on me saying it. I presume I had said it wrong, but the context was clear enough so they understood me. Thanking someone was something I had to do often enough so there was no way around learning to say it. For the rest, however, I chose to stick to just showing the characters I had had my friend write me for common phrases (i.e. "how much?" or "can you help me?").

At the top they had built a pagoda (religious tower), which, as the signs said, had been rebuilt quite recently, following the 2008 earthquake that had levelled the previous one. As it was the summit, I wanted to have a picture of myself there, and handed my cellphone to one of the young chinese who had just finished taking the picture of her friends. She helped gladly.



One thing to note about chinese tourism is that it is mainly internal - most people visiting the sights are other chinese, with the occasional japanese or korean tourists thrown in. Westerners are few and far between - I saw maybe two pairs in total during the whole 5 hours spent at the mountain.

After having my picture taken, I started my descent, only to find that my right knee was giving me pains when walking down the stairs. I therefore opted for a quick route and took the cable car down, followed by a ferry that took me across the scenic mountain lake. By that point, the tourist horde had already caught up with me, so it seemed like a proper time to make my exit in any case. I walked out of the gate and headed towards the parking lot. There I found a green bus, which I remmembered the wikitravel page describe briefly in the section about getting around. I showed the ticket seller a picture of my next destination from a tourist booklet, and was told that the next bus to come would take me there. I did not have to wait for long til it arrived and was indeed waved inside when I showed the picture this time.



The public transportation system, although slightly overcrowded, seems pretty well thought out as a whole in China. Longer distances can be travelled by fast trains in many cases whereas short-range is covered by a thick network of line buses. With trains, however, you generally need to buy your tickets way in advance, or you may end up having to wait for 5+ hours, as happenned to me this time when I was trying to return from Qingcheng, and also last time, both in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Public bus lines are simpler, as you just step in and give them the amount of money they ask (by letting them type the sum on your cellphone dialpad).

I was now in a bus, moving in the right direction. I still had a problem, however, as I knew not where I was supposed to get off. At first, I assumed the problem to be trivial, hoping that the town we were driving into had just one stop. Unfortunately, I was quite wrong in the assumption, as the settlement just kept on going and going. At a place where many people got off, I took my pamphlet and showed it to one of the locals, asking if this was the place. He shook his head. A few stops later, I repeated the question. He again shook his head, now starting to type on his cellphone. A little lated, he showed me what he had been looking for - a dictionary entry showing chinese glyphs and the word "endpoint" below them. I nodded in understanding and thanked him in chinese.



The level of english spoken in China is very low in my experience. Even the professors in charge of organizing the conference barely got their point across or understood what me or Victor (Shoup) said. Their written english was better, but that was of relatively little help. In general, people who even understand bare essentials ("how much?", "how far?", "sorry") of english are very hard to come by, and those who do often cap at roughly that. English is often as foreign to them as Chinese is to us, and this makes tourism in China often an interesting experiment in non-verbal communication.

Having exited the bus at the terminal station, I found myself right in front of the gate of DujiangYan, a network of canals, bridges and dams that had served as an irrigation system for the better part of the past two millenia. Looking at the prices, I was agan struck by the price of the ticket, which was 90 yuan (11 eur), the same as for the mountain complex. At the ticket office, I tried my luck with my ITIC card, handing it to them pretending to be a student. It seemed to work, as I indeed got the 50% discount, which was helpful considering my supply of cash was starting to dry up.



The stories of China as a cheap country should by now belong to the past. Taxis and basic groceries are about twice less than in Estonia, but near everything else (trains, accommodation, tea or food when eating out, museum tickets) were quite comparable. It seems that China is quickly catching up to the western world and at the rate it is going.

I entered the complex and walked around in the gardens, then heading for the main temple, then to the first dam and then across the hanging bridge to the other side of the river. Continuing along the scenic riverbank, with the water torrenting to my right, I suddenly felt an urge to stop at a foodstand. It seemed they had noodles on offer, so I asked for them. To my surprise, the lady then opened up a packet of fast-food ramen, poured hot water in it and handed it to me.

Fast-food ramen in plastic bowls is the most common fast-food available, and and seems to be pretty popular. This is probably sped on by the availability of hot water in public places (railway and bus stations, trains, even some public bathrooms). It is quite common to see people go to the hot water tap to fill the ramen bowl, and I myself had indeed done it just the day before while waiting for my train.

After eating, I continued along the path until I came upon the second hanging bridge. Crossing it was a pretty scary experience as the closer to the middle I got, the wobblier it got, and walking on it without holding to the side rulers was nearly impossible for a person of my height. With their help I safely made it to the other side, and was yet again confronted with an array of temples and pavilions to explore.

Like the Churches in Europe, the temples in China follow the same general principle. There is usually a main hall, housing 1-3 large golden-coloured statues (either of saints, gods or famous historical figures), often with some extra statues on the sides. In front of the main hall there is usually a courtyard, where there is a metal receptacle for burning incense candles. In some cases, there is a garden or some extra monuments nearby, sometimes even another such hall, now with different statues. And, of course, all of the walls are in shades of dark red. They are all quite impressive, but after seeing about 10 of them, they slowly start to get a bit repetitive, especially considering the statues all look the same to the untrained eye, and the legends (if they are translated to english) are unintelligible to someone not grown up in this cultural space.





Despite being a little fed up with the temples, I nevertheless continued on the recommended route - mainly due to the natural scenery. The path now followed the other side of the river, only a few hundred meters up a slope, providing a nice view of the town through the trees. The path again went up and down, which by the end became pretty exhausting, and I was quite relieved when the path finally decended out of the complex and into the city. As I wanted to return to the bus station, I now had to turn to ask for directions.

One more thing in China I have a quarrel with is a lack of accurate maps near the tourist attractions, which makes it very hard to navigate both inside them as well as between. The brochures all rely on schematics, assuming everyone can fill the missing details in themselves. The end result is that the maps are of some use, but the use mainly comes from helping to later remmember where you have already been. I was not in too bad of a state, having two offline maps at my disposal in my phone. These were of limited use, however, as both had a very low level of detail for the suburb I was in. The GPS receiver for the phone also refused to cooperate, often pointing kilometers away from where I should have actually been. All in all, this resulted in me having a very vague understanding of where I was at any given time. Thankfully, it was enough in most cases. However, a few strategically placed city maps would have made my life considerably easier.



When following the directions I got, I quite soon realized I was not quite where I wanted to be. I walked in the direction I thought the main gate was to be, but found a dead end waiting for me. Retracing my steps, I took the next parallel street and this time found that my sense of direction had indeed been correct, leading me to the bus station just in time to catch the bus back to the motel. The bus again sped off along the road lined on both side with small red national flags.



Other than the occasional national flag, there are very few hints to the fact that China is a communist country. To the contrary, most everything from the flasing signs to the wealth of small businesses point to the growing influence of capitalism in the society. During my visit, I did get to see one statue of Chairman Mao, but only because I explicitly went looking for it in central Chengdu on my final day there. If not for the weird characters everywhere, China (as I have seen it) might well be any other capitalist country in the view of a brief visitor.



On the way back, the bus took a different route than I expected, passing through the train station and then continuing towards the mountain from the wrong direction. I again had to guess when to jump off, but my intuition did not fail me and after a brief walk, I found myself right in the back of the tourist information center, among the red tents I had seen the day before when walking around. The tents were food stalls, selling all matter of local cuisine. After a quick tour, I opted for a bowl of noodles with seafood.



One thing worth noting is that Sichuan is known among Chinese as the province of spicy food. Considering normal chinese is already quite spicy you can imagine what Sichuan cuisine is like. As a hint - chilli seems to be a staple food, mixed half-n-half with whatever else is available (meat, potatoes, noodles, vegetables). And I only wish I was exaggerating, but for the more spicy foods that really was the case, and those were unedible for me as I quite quickly found out. Some of the foods had a little less spice, thankfully (think three chilis in an estonian restaurant menu), and as a fallback, there were always instant noodles. Oh, and in case you were wondering . yes, they also put chilli in their snacks and sweets too.



After the meal, it was getting dark so I headed for the motel, ready to go to sleep to prepare myself for the busy day ahead. The busy day that already started with the left foot when I had to wait for my train for 5 hours, and stretched very, very long with me being stuck in Northwestern China for 8 hours as we were waiting for a replacement plane... but that's a whole other story.

Hitchhiking competition, Day 4

We woke up very early, in order to make it to the first ferry across back to the mainland. We set off towards the harbor - which was considerably further than we initially thought and as such, we ended up actually running in order to catch it. But we did, and then enjoyed the well-deserved cup of coffee on the ferry.

We also ran across the same pair of our competitors we met on the Saaremaa ferry. Since all of us were still fairly tired, we mostly sat in silence. Before docking, I managed to find us a ride to the next crossroads. The driver (who worked in biofuels) dropped us to the crossing towards Lihula. 

We found another hitchhiker there before us. We greeted her and then walked past her and settled a bit further. We had to wait for quite a while. 

We were eventually picked up by a group of  Czech tourists. They were in a hurry to get to the Saaremaa ferry, but nevertheless took us to one of the points - a Bishop's fort from the medieval times in Koluvere.


They told us they had been to Kunda the day before, and told us what it meant in Czech. Supposedly, it was a popular tourist attraction for Czechs for that reason.

They put us off near the gas station where the road led from Lihula back to Pärnu - crossroads where we had been just the day before. Since we had skipped breakfast and the traffic was slow, I went inside to get a hot dog for T., and quite soon after she had finished it, we were picked up and driven all the way to central Pärnu.

Our next destination was reachable by public inner city transport, so we bought bus tickets and then had  hamburger while waiting. Bus came soon enough and we got on board.

We had no clue where to get off, but T. asked a few locals in the bus and they helped gladly. From the  stop it was still about a kilometers walk in the hot sun to get to our destination - a fish ladder for the Sindy dam, next to the fishery.

On arriving, we found another pair ahead of us just ready to leave... and then when climbing to the ladder itself to take a picture, found a local TV celebrity (Vladislav Koržets) interviewing the head of the fishery. Inconsiderate as we were, we just walked through their background to get what we came for.


We then took a bus back to the edge of Pärnu, heading south. There was another couple there already, so we again walked past them and started hitchiking. They were picked up in a matter of 15 minutes but we were not so lucky. Cars kept whizzing by, not giving us the slightest attention. Eventually, another couple showed up and settled behind us - and then got picked up before we did. After 3 days on the road, emotions were soaring and that made us furious. Thankfully, we were also picked up soon after.

The driver drove us only a few kilometers, though. He explained that he used to hitchhike a lot and made a promise that when he got a car, he would always pick up other hitchhikers when he saw them. That said, he said he had now driven for 5+ years but despite that we were the first he had picked up in the period.

After he dropped us off, we again had to wait a while. Eventually, we were picked up by the same car that had first picked up the people behind us (thus making us mad). Nevertheless, since he was now giving us a ride, and actually took us past the couple he had picked up before, we calmed down consierably. He took us to about halfway where we needed, where the road turned towards Viljandi.

There was a 7 km stretch of road repairs in the direction we were heading, which made hitchhiking there near impossible. We therefore had to walk past all of it, to a small truck stop, by which time we were near dying of thirst (or at least it felt like it). We restocked on our water supplies and then put our thumbs up again.

We got picked up by a van with a trailer full of bicycles, and in getting in we found one hitchhiker already waiting for us there, who was on her way to Riga. They dropped us off next to the settlement where we needed to go.

Due to the imprecision of the map in specifying where the checkpoint was, we took the scenic route to the monument, walking 3 km where 1 would have sufficed, being pretty exhausted from the heat by the end.


We now had to find our way out of the settlement. After walking into a dead end and deciding not to listen to a drunk man walking by, we saw a car coming and asked for a ride out of town. The lady was nice enough to take us to the highway, again next to the gas station.

We now had two options -  try the main highway or go for the more direct side route. Since the local lady said that the direct route was also used often enough, we opted for that, and were indeed picked up by a car heading for Viljandi.

We were now heading for the finish line at 90 km/h, hoping to gather one more checkpoint that was practically on the way. The driver was indeed nice enough to take the 200-m detour to stop off at the Allikukivi caves (which really weren't much to look at, despite what T. remmembered from her youth), and we still arrived in Viljandi with ample time to spare.


In the end, we got the 4-th place, with just 0.5 pt separating us from the third and 1.5 pts from the second place. By that time we had been in around 50 cars and driven around 1500 km. We were dead tired, but quite content with 4 days of very active vacationing.

Addendum: After the award ceremony, we decided to head back to Pärnu. As all the buses had already left, we decided to try hitchhiking again. This time we failed, however, as there was practically no traffic heading towards Pärnu. Eventually we decided to set up the tent on the field by the side of the road, just a few km from Viljandi. We were both very dissapointed with the turn of events, but morning coffee in the bus station the next day mostly cleared that out.

Hitchhiking competition, Day 3

This is a guest post by T.

Day three. We woke up at my parents place in Pärnu. I was so grateful for getting to sleep in my own bed and getting a shower after two days in wild (and the morning coffee!), but arriving there late had been a little awkward, though. My parents hadn’t met M before, and my mom didn’t even know I was in a hitchhiking competition. She doesn’t agree with hitchhiking. Therefore, I was really glad at how calm she took it and how friendly she was. Everything went well, and we got to sleep for quite long.

Or at least until 8 o’clock or something.

We stood at Pärnu’s limits, with a sign “Edasi!” (“Forward!”, sounding like a slogan). One car took us to Audru, a nearby village. There, we painted on a bigger sign “Saaremaa”, which was our next destination. Since I was bored of us telling the same story about our hitchhiking competition to all the drivers, I told M that we should make up something instead. We decided to introduce ourselves to the next driver as a brother and sister driving to visit our grandma. We put together our characters: he would be a builder, I’d work at a supermarket and go to trade school studying to be a shop assistant (yeah, they actually teach it at schools). When the next car picked us up, we didn’t have a good chance on introducing ourselves that way, though. In this car, a woman was driving and a man sat in the front. They told us they were heading to Lihula. The man had work there. I asked what they did for living. The woman told: “He is a music teacher, don’t you recognize your own teacher?” I, indeed, hadn’t. I hadn’t seen the face of the man before, but it turned out it was my middle school teacher, who had left for work in Iceland, but apparently got back and didn’t find a satisfying job in Pärnu, so decided to take a job in Lihula. I was really glad that we hadn’t told them more than that we were going to visit our grandma, because the named teacher knows my parents, and probably knows that I have no brothers. The rest of the drive he told us stories about Iceland’s school system.

From Lihula we got to Virtsu, the ferry port, with a car of a woman who apologized for the dog hair and mess she had in her car. I didn’t mind, though. Compared to standing at the back of the roadworker’s paint-stenched van, it was nice and comfy. She took us to our next destination, which was off the road, a tavern named “Mutionu”. It looked as if it had been built in an old cellar. She then took us directly to the ferry station as well, which was nice of her.



The ferry drove from Virtsu to Muhu in half an hour. Muhu is a smaller island, connected to the bigger, Saaremaa, with a bridge. On Muhu we had two places we had to see, and on Saaremaa, there were three. We decided to take all the points on Muhu and then see if we had time for Saaremaa, as we planned to go with the last ferry to Hiiumaa. For our plan to work, we needed to get to Tupenurme village on Muhu. We met another competing couple in the ferry, who told they had already found someone that would drive them away from port. One of us had to talk to people as well, to ask where they’re going and if they’d take us with. I left that for M, as I was too much a coward to talk to strangers like that. He got us a ride to 5 km from our destination. They dropped us off right next to a supermarket. The place was such that every car that would drive out of the parking lot would fill us with false hopes. We stood there for long, it seemed, but I guess it wasn’t more than 15 minutes. What made it awful was the really hot weather, and our warm clothes. A car finally picked us up. We took a picture at the village sign and, after changing our clothes in the forest in the anthill, hitchhiked right back. I don’t remember the people that picked us up there too well any more.



Somehow we got to the next village, Koguva. It was a tourist trap: there was a map of hundred places where movies were made during last century, and some of the places were there as well. We only saw the map and the parking lot, but the village contained at least four housings for tourists, a museum, a nice beach and some workshops for making... something... We hitchhiked back on a car of the museum director, who told us more about the village. I was a little sorry we didn’t get to see more there.


We headed to Kuressaare, the only town on the island, after that. It surprised me how far away it was: 70 km. I had thought the island was smaller. It seemed that our good luck continued, as we hadn’t stood there five minutes when we were picked up again. It was a young guy wearing sweatpants in a fancy-looking car. You’d assume people who look like this would be narrow minded and act on a certain stereotype, but after an hour in his car, we realized our prejudice was not justified. He listened to reggae and seemed quite intelligent and open-minded. A reminder of how looks can be deceiving. Just like those two guys heading to pick mushrooms the day before...

We calculated that we’d still have time to take at least one out of three points in Saaremaa, even though they were far away from civilization.One was in a nature resort, another was on northern coast. When we stood at the crossroads, it seemed more cars were heading to the nature resort, so we tried our luck with that, writing “Viidumäe” on a sign. Not long after that, we were picked up. A car with a young couple on front and a drunk woman at back. She was scary, she pulled the map out of my hands as I tried to calculate our way. Thankfully, they didn’t take us long, though, just 15 km.

The next car stopped for us just minutes later. It was a family with two little children, so first they had to make room for us. The mother would take one of the children to sit on her lap. They told us they had seen us on the crossroads before, and drove past thinking “We can’t take them, we don’t have room with two children,” then reconsidered and thought they could make us room, drove back and didn’t find us, since we were picked up already. As they headed back to home, they drove past us once more. Lucky us! And the young family was quite interesting as well: the woman originated from South Africa, and the guy had dreadlocks just like M. Hippies, we thought.

They took us to the nature reserve, waited until we climbed the watching tower, and drove us back to the main road as well.


We didn’t run out of luck after this nice family either. With two cars, we got to the crossroads heading to the north coast. It seemed that we had time to take yet another point in the middle of nowhere, since there was lots of time before the ferry and we had met only nice and friendly people with every other car picking us up. We hadn’t waited for fifteen minutes when a car took us from Tõlli to Tagaranna (both really small villages). In Tagaranna, there was a memorial for the victims of the sinking of the ship “Estonia”. We also found a statue of an old man smoking a pipe there, which was one of our “moving points”.


We walked on the beach, looking for statue, with a young Finnish couple. As it was nowhere in sight, we decided to run in opposite directions along the coast. I found it first, and then had to wait for M to run back to me with the camera to take the picture.



The couple then took us to ferry port. They had a kid with them who listened to Moomin tales in finnish on the back seat. They told us they were tired of driving around the Estonia already, and the kid even didn’t come out of the car when parents went to look the coast. The woman picked some weird flowers from the forest, saying it’s for medicine. I wish I had known the name of the plant (I study biology, you know). The family seemed almost as interesting as the hippies from South Africa for me. The woman worked with handicapped people and told us she’s a vegetarian because of the way the animals are treated. It irritated me a little that she tried to push it on her children as well, but I didn’t say anything. I tried to leave as good an impression on them as I could, since I was really grateful for being picked up at such an abandoned place and taken right to the port, while I had thought we’d have to drive back to Kuressaare before heading to the port, since the traffic is low there. We had been so lucky that day!

We even had time to eat burgers before the ferry (yeah I’m guilty for M eating meat...) and climb an adventure trail we found next to the shop. We walked about 2 km to the port, and wondered about the things at the road the whole time: a fence built in the forest, ending at a strange place, with no obvious purpose, a field of strange plants, between them growing poppy’s, a nut tree and a cherry tree. There were also some strawberries beside the road, of which I couldn’t get enough of.

The ferry trip from Saaremaa to Hiiumaa took one and a half hour. We had time to drink coffee, check where other couples were heading (one had just missed the last ferry we were on), and again, ask strangers where they were heading and if they took us with them. Again, I left that for M. He talked to almost everyone before finally found us two people who were heading to Kärdla, but, since the girl had been on the hitchhiking competition on a previous year, agreed on taking us to two other places we needed to head to on Hiiumaa. One was Külaküla küla, a village which’s name is, in translation, Villagevillage. The other was yet another monument.


 After the monument, the couple told us we should see the Eiffel tower of Hiiumaa as well: a huge tower built by a crazy, but brilliant local. Not only was there a tower in his yard, he had made a whole theme park with nitty comments everywhere. Some pictures:



After the Eiffel tower, we decided to once more try our crazy luck, and hitchhike to the south part of the island to take two more points and head to the first ferry in the morning. We were, indeed, lucky again. A car picked us up and took us to Suuremõisa, even though the driver originally wanted to go only half the way there. The map told us there was two places of accommodation there, but what we found out was that one was being renovated and the other only accepted cash, which we had run out of. We still got to find our checkpoint, “an outhouse with interesting design”:


We started walking towards the port in dark after that, as there was supposed to be another place of accommodation. Margus would’ve been ok with us staying in tent again, but I didn’t like the idea at all, since we hadn’t still figured out how to put up the tent, there were lots of mosquitoes and there wasn’t a good place to put up our tent. We had this crazy idea of walking 10 km to the last checkpoint in Hiiumaa, but since we were too tired, gave it up. A car drove past us when we were heading to port. They picked us up: two locals heading home. When they heard of our hitchhiking competition and how we looked for a place to stay in night, they offered us to stay in their home (right as we were about to go into the hotel). So, we got to sleep in a bed again. Crazy luck, and those locals in Hiiumaa are really friendly!

Hitchhiking competition, Day 2

We woke up next morning at 7.30 after 6 and a half hours of sleep. T. had slept well, which I hope was because I was curled around her, keeping her both warm and protected from the wind. I had not been so lucky, however, being half-awake most of the night and having rain drip on my nose for most of that time. Despite that, I actually felt pretty fresh waking up and had no problem packing our stuff and getting going.

Our first objective was to go to the cross that we had missed the night before by just a few hundred meters. As it was now light outside, we decided to go for a more direct path going along a grassy path along a field of wheat. The cross was about 2 km away, and was truly beautiful, being by far the nicest looking monument we came across during the whole trip.



We then walked back to the highway and set back westwards. The first car dropped us to the Kohtla-Järve crossroads that we had been dropped to the night before. From there, we were picked up by an emergency rescue worker heading for work, who dropped us off right next to our next checkpoint.

We now had a 100m climb ahead of us, as the next checkpoint was the peak of the Kiviõli ash mountain. The road up the mountain was pretty steep and slippery, which was not easy for T. who had  fairly slippery footwear. Nevertheless, we managed to haul ourselves and our bags up the mountain and then got to enjoy our breakfast (bread with canned tuna) along with a truly magnificent view.




We then climbed down but then had a dilemma in front of us. Our next point was quite a way away, and there were two ways of getting there - a more direct route, which seemed less used but started right at the base of the mountain, and the more used route that required we somehow get back to the highway.

After trying to get a ride at the base, it quickly became clear that this was not a feasible choice (due to the low volume of traffic passing by). We therefore headed to the nearby gas station, got our morning coffe and then started asking people if they would drop us to the highway. Eventually, one lady took us on board and dropped us off on the highway, about a third of the way to where we needed to get. She explained she was actually heading to where we needed to get, but was working and had to make a few stops on the way, promising to give us a ride if we failed to get one before.

We were now near a gas station by the highway. We asked all the cars stopping for gas if they could take us further, and in half an hour, we were on our way again. When in the car, we again realized we had about three equally valid possibilities, as our next stop was Kunda on the north coast.

We probably chose the worst of them - opting for the direct route from Rakvere (as opposed to the route from Tallinn or the route from Narva), which was probably the least used of the three, seeing only one car every 10 minutes. The third car did stop, but only took us 3 km further, landing us literally in the middle of nowhere.  From there, we had to walk 2 km before we came to another car willing to take us on board. That driver was very nice to us, however, going a few km out of his way to drop us exactly at the crossing near Kunda we needed to get to.

Our next checkpoint was actually in a small village called Rutja 15 km west of Kunda. However, we got lucky, being picked up by two guys (väga stereotüüpsed rullnokad) heading there to go pick mushrooms. They dropped us off in the settlement, where we now started hunting for locals to ask them where the checkpoint was - because this was one of the strangest (and cutest) checkpoints listed, namely a tombstone for a border guard dog Djoma, who had given 22 years of faithful service. Thankfully, the locals knew where it was and gladly told us which fence we had to hop over in order to get there. And behold, there it was, right in the corner of the yard.



We now got a ride back to the Kunda crossroads and from there quickly got another car heading for Tallinn. The driver was russian, but his first question was if we were in the competition. We answered in affirmative and then tried to figure out where we were actually trying to head next. After some deliberation we realized we had actually forgot to consider one fairly obvious choice that was supposed to be just along the highway, and decided to try for that. We asked to be dropped off near Kuusalu.

Again, we had to ask the locals to find what we were looking for - a burger stand made famous in the Estonian short movie "Tulnukas" (link, Part VI, 8:48). This time, their answers were quite surprising, however - namely, all 3 people we asked said that the place had been destroyed and now contained a grocery store. Not to be deterred, we just took a picture of the said store.



We then had to walk all the way back to the highway, and since it was about time for lunch we decided to have burgers in honor of the burger stand that had not been there. Yes - I am no longer a vegetarian, having given it up about a month ago. However, this was my first burger in 8 years - something definitely worthy of celebration.



We then went to the gas station and soon got a ride with two young russian guys heading towards Narva. We were now heading for Palmse, so we asked to be dropped off where the road turned towards Viitna. The road there was being repaired, so one lane was closed and there were two roadworkres with a car painting a turn sign on the closed lane. We walked past them and continued walking, as Viitna was just 2 km away.

Half the way there, we notice the roadworkers van approaching behind us. To our surprise, they actually stop and offer us a ride - first only to Viitna, but after they had their lunch, they turn towards us again and offer to drive us all the way to Palmse, to the piles of rock called Famine stones gathered by peasants during a famine a few hundred years ago.



Roadworkers then give us a ride back to the highway and drop us at the crossroads towards Tapa. Our next checkpoint was Tapa-Loobu roadsign (both place names, but translating to "Kill - Cancel"). We knew where both settlements were, but we had no idea where the sign was located. Neither did the driver who first picked us up. Despite our vigilance, we did not see the sign, which left us at a dilemma when we were dropped us off at a crossing. We consulted our maps and realized we should be near, but since we had no idea where to look exactly, we were considering abandoning the point and continuing to the next one.

At one point, T. decided to walk a bit further to check the roadsign further on for how far we are from the nearest settlement. She got 10 paces before she began laughing and called me over. We then had our picture taken with what we saw:



We then set towards Kadrina, and again had a stroke of luck. As the traffic seemed slow, T. headed to the woods to pick berries, and emerged from there along with a woman who had been picking mushrooms, and whose car was on the side of the road. We quickly asked where she was heading, and she replied "Home, to Kadrina". She gladly took us on board and even drove us a bit outside the settlement to the actual checkpoint - the statue of a wooden fist.



She then drove us back and left us at the crossroads towards Paide. We quickly got a ride again. The next 70 km stretch was spent talking to the driver, who was a cattle inseminator for the two counties we were passing through. There were two checkpoints near the road we were driving, and the driver briefly considered driving through one, but then remembered he was in a hurry and was already running late for an appointment. As we were making good progress, we decided to skip the two and just continue onward.

We were again dropped next to the checkpoint, which was a statue of a Hitchhiker, allegedly made by a young artist who later committed suicide by setting himself on fire at just age 26.



The irony of having just visited the statue of a Hitchhiker was that we had now run out of luck. Our original idea of heading for the last Saaremaa ferry was soon replaced by just a desire to get T. home to Pärnu as car after car after car passed by without picking us up, and the two that did both took us just 15 km. Sun was setting and we were on the side of the road from Paide to Pärnu with one car driving by every 15 minutes, always at around 100 km/h. We got so desperate we wrote "Please" on one of the papers we had and started showing that. At one point, I knelt down on the pavement with the said sign as one car was nearing. Didn't help.

As the sun was setting, a fire truck drove by us at 100 km/h. It too, did not pick us up. Initially at least, as after about a minute, we saw the same car approach from the other direction and stop just where we were standing. We heartily thanked the driver for coming back for us and climbed aboard.



The car was manned only by the driver, who said it was a spare car and he was driving it to Are cross where he was to switch cars. T. lit up when she heared that, and then explained that Are cross was on Tallinn-Pärnu highway and only 20 km from Pärnu, so there was a real chance we would actually be able to get to Pärnu for the night. Until then, however, we still had about 60 km in the fire truck.

When at the crossing, it was dark already, and there were no streetlights around, so we had to hitchhike in darkness. Using our flashlights and reflectors, we managed to make ourselves visible and were quite soon picked up by two young men for Poland who asked us in Russian if we could direct them to a hotel for the night. In my limited Russian, I answered in affirmative and we climbed into the backseat with all our stuff.

They asked us if we were brother and sister, and I said no. They then asked if we were... well something I did not understand, so I asked for clarification. They then resorted to body language, in what is universally accepted as the sign for sexual intercourse. T. blushed while I answered in affirmative yet again. We showed them a hotel in central Pärnu, grabbed our stuff and then walked back to the edge of the city where T. lived.

Finally - a warm bed to rest in for the night. Something both of us badly wanted. Also - a shower, which was something I wanted even slightly more, considering how hot the weather had been. Thankfully, we got both :)

Hitchhiking competition, Day 1

There is a hitchhiking competition held every year in Tartu by the university nature preservation club. I participated last year, and since it went unexpectedly well (we got the second place), I was anxious to try it again this year.

The competition is for mixed (boy-girl) pairs, who have 3.5 days to visit as many of the ~40 checkpoints as they can, using only walking and hitchiking as the means of transportation. The competition generally starts on Monday in Tartu and the finish is  on Thursday in the Viljandi Folk Music Festival. To collect a point the pair has to take a photo with at least one member visible along with the object described in the checkpoint description (such as a certain memorial stone or a building). The checkpoints are scattered around all across Estonia, both on the mainland and on the islands, and although they were numbered, the pairs are free to choose the order in which they collected them as well as which points to collect and which to abandon.

This year, I had my girlfriend as my hitchiking partner, which is common, although a pair of two friends seems to be more frequent in a ratio of about 1:2, judging by the 13 pairs on the starting line this year.


The competition started at 10.00 behind the Town Hall in Tartu. We arrived just in time to hear the introductory speech, after which they handed us the roadmap collection, the checkpoint descriptions and a SIM-card for mobile tracking.


Our first order of business was to make some copies of the checkpoint descriptions, as my last year's experience showed that they tend to be very easy to misplace or have damaged accidentally and so it pays to have a few spares. As we also had some errands to run, we decided to split the work. I therefore grabbed the bags and headed to my workplace to do the copying, while T.K. (my gf) headed first to the library and then to grab us both breakfast.

After she joined me with the sandwiches, we decided to head to the southern border of Tartu to try and take 5 of the 7 points in SE-Estonia.

When we got there, we found two pairs on the side of the road already. One of them got picked up ahead of us, but the car that took the other pair also drove a bit further and picked us up as well. We were now two competing pairs in the same car.

The driver was a young man who had graduated high school the year before and had just recently finished military service. He seemed eager to help us and so we wasted no time in explaining that we were competing and needed to visit certain (weird) places. As 3 of the 5 checkpoints (all memorial stones) were on his route, he gladly drove us to all these. He said he would also drop us off to the fourth, but needed to go by her grandmothers to drop something off. Her grandmother, however, lived about 10 km from the 5-th point and once he realized this, he made the following offer: "I'll take you to the 5-th and then back to the 4-th, if you'll share a burger with me in Põlva". This we gladly agreed to.

He had a mutual friend with the girl from the other pair and they talked a while about that. After that it turned out that he was to come to study Computer Science in Tartu, at which point I explained what I do for a living and what he can expect when coming to study in Tartu. By the time he dropped us off at one of the main roads heading back to Tartu, we had managed to collect 5 checkpoints in less than 3 hours, probably putting us ahead of most of the competition.



Getting back to Tartu was also easy, as we were essentially picked up by the first car passing by, which took us directly to the shopping mall on the outskirts of Tartu. We went through the mall to the bus stop and took an inner-city bus (the use of which was also within rules) to the other side of the town.

We now attempted to hitchike north, towards Narva. However, it seemed that our luck had changed and had now abandoned us - there was quite a bit of traffic, but no-one was interested in picking us up. After nearly half an hour of not being picked up, I finally realized what the problem was, however - we were on the side of the wrong road - which led to the right place, but which was marked as a side-road, not the main road by the road maps. Thankfully, the right road was still within walking distance, so after 3 km of walking we were finally in the right place.

There we got picked up pretty quickly. The driver asked where we wanted to go and what we were doing, of course. While trying to answer, we discovered to our horror that we had lost our Estonian Road Atlas that we relied on for navigation -  so we quickly asked the driver to stop and to just drop us to the nearest bus stop.

That was a pretty unsettling experience for us. However, I quickly remembered a similar incident from last year, when my partner had lost her phone near one checkpoint and then had to hitchhike back and was successful in retrieving it. In a similar vain, I recommended that T. go back alone as a lone girl without bags tends to be picked up more quickly. She agreed and did indeed get a ride quite quickly. Soon after I got a phone call from her saying that she had indeed found the roadmaps and was now on her way back.

In another 5 minutes she already said she was in a car and told me to prepare our bags. It turned out she had been picked up by a family van driving back home. We asked them about the next checkpoint (which was a fence made out of old skis), one of the children said he had seen it once, but could not remember the location. They told us that they could not drive us all the way, but dropped us off at a crossing about 3/4 of the way there.

What followed was probably the longest wait during our whole trip, as we did not get picked up for nearly 3 hours and managed to walk nearly 6 km before finally getting a car. Not a total loss, though, as we passed by a herd of cows while walking, netting us an extra point for "a lone cow on the side of the road".

We were eventually picked up by an executive of VKG, one of the biggest private energy providers in Estonia. Despite his stern looks, he was very helpful and agreed to drive us through Kasepää and help search for the ski fence. The fence, however, was nowhere to be found. On contacting the organizers, it turned out we weren't the only ones with the problem and that the fence was probably in another Kasepää, 30 km south. This was a bit too far off the road, however, so we decided to just continue northwards in the same car.



He dropped us off at the Tallinn-St.Petersburg highway, just north of Kohtla-Järve, where we arrived just as the sun was setting. We thanked him and then put our thumbs up again, this time moving towards Narva. Despite the bad reputation of Tallinn-St.Petersburg highway among hitchikers, we were picked up in a matter of minutes.

The man who had taken us aboard was quite friendly, but there was a small problem of a language barrier. Most people in NE-Estonia are native russian-speakers, originally from other parts of the Soviet union. As for us, both me and T. have both learned some russian in school, but since neither of us has had to use it much, we were both fairly rusty, being able to communicate only the most basic things. Most of the car ride was therefore spent in silence.

Before entering Sillamäe (about 7 km short of our destination), we started thinking on what to do next. The sun had set completely and it was quite dark. We were in NE estonia, which has a reputation for a high crime rate. It seemed that the sensible course would be to find some lodging. We therefore said we wanted to go to hotel. The driver smiled and said he would gladly drop us off at hotel "Krunk".

Entering the hotel, we realized why he had smiled - hotel Krunk was a fancy, 3, maybe even 4-star hotel, with rooms going for 60 eur - a bit out of our budget range (which he could easily tell considering how we dressed and travelled). We therefore started discussing alternatives.

According to the map, there was one other place in Sillamäe called hostel "Oravake". However, I remmembered I had heared about that from Taiji friends of mine - who had always described it fondly as a "complete hellhole". For me, that would have been a good reason to visit - just to see how bad it could be - but T. persuaded me to keep on hitchiking and try to reach our checkpoint in Sinimäe.

Walking out of Sillamäe, we were both struck by its beauty. It was a soviet city, but built in the beginning of the era, with remarkably beautiful buildings and wide roads with plenty of greenery. Quite surprising for us, since we had been stuck in the stereotypes of NE being the backwater of Estonia.

We got to the side of the road and raised our thumbs. And then burst in laughter, as it dawned on us what we were doing. It was 11 PM, completely dark (save for the streetlights) and we were hitchhiking in what is reputably the highest crime rate area in Estonia. I commented that "I would not pick us up if I was a driver passing by here!".

Thankfully, not everyone thought the way I did and within half an hour, we were picked up by a mild mannered older russian man, driving home to Narva. He gladly dropped us off by the Sinimäe sign, from where it was maybe half a km walk to the village.

The place itself seemed nearly deserted, and the checkpoint (a memorial cross for the battle in Sinimäe - one of the bloodiest battles in WW2 in Estonia) was nowhere to be found. Neither was the hostel reputed to be in the village by the roadmap.

However, we were again very lucky - as we stumbled to a museum, and the light was on in the ground floor. We knocked on the door and a middle-aged man answered us - IN ESTONIAN. We quickly explained our situation and asked about both the cross and the hostel. He explained that the hostel we were looking for was to the north near the coast, maybe 5-6 km away, but that the cross was indeed nearby, maybe 2 km to the west, and he gladly gave us directions there. The battery of my phone (that doubled as our GPS) had run out, so I asked if I could leave it to charge while we went to take the checkpoint, and he agreed, asking us to be back in an hour or so.

We therefore continued walking, in darkness without streetlights and with dogs barking on both sides of the road - until we came to a bus stop that did not have a name printed on it. And then past that, to a cemetery. And sure enough - it was midnight. We knew that the cross was nearby, but in darkness it was impossible to find. We headed back to the museum.

The guardian was still there, and explained that we should have turned back from the bus stop and had literally stopped maybe just 100 m from the cross - which we would have definitely seen if it's lighting had been on. At that point, however, we were too tired to go there again so we decided to call it a night and try in the early morning.

The man showed us a spot on the museum lawn where he thought it should be good to camp, and also showed us to the bathroom where we refilled our water supply. We thanked him dearly and then set off to erect the tent.

We failed, however. The tent, which I had borrowed from a friend, seemed to be a standard two-arc tent, but for some reason, we could not get the arcs to bend properly. As we were dead-tired, we decided to just let it be, put one part of the tent under us, another over us, pinned both down so they would not move and then climbed between them in our sleeping bags, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before continuing.

What I've done

Many people have recently asked me, what is it exactly that I have been doing for the past year, and most importantly, what have I managed to accomplish in this period. To be honest, I did not have a good answer to it for quite some time, as days are generally filled with many small things and in a day-to-day hassle it is often hard to see the bigger picture.

Yesterday me and my boss, the vice-head of the institute in charge of teaching, went for a dinner to discuss just this matter: what we had and had not accomplished in the year that we have had our positions. This post is mainly based on this discussion. What follows is a short summary of the things I have headed or been strongly involved in.

Curricula

• New Bachelor's curriculum - it took a better part of the year discussing it with different parties and playing with different ideas, but I believe that what we came up with in the end is pretty much optimal - both in terms of course selection and how they are distributed to the semesters. One thing I did find when working with it though was that our previous two curricula (which we combined into one) were already pretty good - especially compared to the curriculum I was on when I started - so the new curriculum, although considerably better planned out, represents only a modest step forward, as there is just so much you can do on a curriculum level. 
• New Master's curriculum - while the new Bachelor's curriculum was built up from scratch, the new master's curriculum is much more similar to the previous one, with just some minor modifications - which is reasonable as the master's curriculum allows for more specialization and freedom of choice and as such needs much less central planning and regulation. Again, I believe that what we have now presents a modest improvement over previous state of affairs, which was well worth the time spent on it.
• Information about the curricula - I spent quite a bit of time in the beginning of the year figuring out what order the courses should best fit in the current curricula and how to present this information to the students, and talking with the lecturers about whether the proposed changes suited them. It seems that this worked and information is now in an accessible place and students are aware of it and can see what courses they should be taking on the semesters to come.
  
  I did make my first big mistake as a curriculum manager on this task, though. Namely, I managed to send all the first year CS students to a course that most have difficulty even on their second year. Sadly, I found this out too late, so as a result, many flunked and lost some of their motivation. How big the losses are, is still a bit early to say, but we will see that soon enough.
• Internal review of curricula -  University of Tartu has an internal curriculum review process where every 3 years the curriculum managers have to answer a set of self-assessment questions to make them think about what is and is not working in their curriculum and how to improve things.  I started my job just as this process was commencing again, and had to write this self-assessment. Thankfully, having quite recently graduated the curriculum and knowing the faculty and students pretty well, this was not hard - and did make me think about a few aspects I had neglected before.
• Personnel planning - as the curriculum manager, one of my main responsibilities is teaching planning, i.e. managing who teaches what and what courseload everyone has (i.e. how much everyone teaches). This had to be done both for the year running, and in our case also for the year to come, as the new curriculum means major changes and these needed to be planned out to see if everything would fit. There was also an aspect of strategic management, as our institute is expanding and we needed to figure out what types of courses would need more teaching assistants and how many of them - both now and in the few years to come. 

Supervision

• Seminar supervisors - we pioneered a new process where all the 100 students wishing to graduate were divided between 7 faculty supervisors so each had about 15 students to supervise, with whom they held bi-weekly seminars. This centralized the supervision process, as all the details about deadlines, requirements and recommendations now needed to be communicated initally only to 7 people. Many were skeptical of the idea at first, but I would attribute all of the 20% increase in the number of students defending this year to this change. Student feedback is also highly positive and the 7 supervisors were also mostly positive about the experience, most saying they would try to do a few things differently and better next year. In short, this process is likely to continue into the future, and will provide for a basis of a solution that scales even if we get 150 students wishing to defend.
• Reading all the thesis abstracts - our faculty has a rule where students need to submit the problem statement ("abstract") of their thesis about 3 months before they have to present the whole thesis. Normally, this is just a formality and no-one reads them, which seemed a bit absurd to me - so as the curriculum manager, I decided to take it on me to read through all of them and give students feedback in terms of how complicated their chosen topic is with respect to the expected ("average") level of theses.
  
  The abstracts made for some interesting reading, but it was often quite hard to judge the level of complexity. Also, having to write feedback to nearly 100 abstracts took disproportionately much time and I doubt the feedback I gave made much difference in most cases. As a measure of balancing the level of theses and making the grades more predictable, this approach is probably not the most reasonable. The problem was actually solved by seminar supervision - as students saw in the seminars what others were doing and thus could judge the level of their work on their own, probably better than I could. As such - it was worth trying but it will not be repeated. 

• My own 15 students - in order to make the process change easier, I decided to also be one of the 7, this despite only having supervised one master's student and no bachelor's students before. Most of them had a second supervisor to help with the content, so my main job was the presentation i.e. the thesis writing. Sadly, despite setting some intermediate milestones with deadlines, most students started writing very late, maybe a week or two before the deadline. This provided for a very intensive weekend before the deadline, where I was reading 11 theses in different stages of disrepair. In total, 10 of them made it to the defense - resulting in 2 A, 6 B and 2 C -s. 

Work with students

• My courses - I had just two - "Introduction to informatics" in the spring, and "Graphs" in the fall - both 2 x 2h per week. First one was mainly based on guest lectures and as such involved a lot of organizing. Second one was a small-group course with 10 students, which was a challenge since it was my first time giving lectures, and I also experimented with pair-learning by assigning students in random pairs in the practicals and then having them solve problems together. The experiment was a success, as students seemed to like it and the results were a bit better than past years.
• First year student conference - this year, we had a student conference for first-year students (together with the faculty of natural sciences and technology), where the goal was to motivate their studies and introduce them to everything the university has to offer. In general, it went very well, but the main problem was a very low turnout rate as only very few students bothered to show up, possibly due to bad choice of time. Hopefully, this year will be better, as a more suitable time was chosen for the coming autumn.
• Student councilor - during most of last year, I also had an appointment as the student councilor, which meant 2 hrs each week in a room on the ground floor where students could come to with their problems and questions. Truth be told, there was not much demand, as Student Tutors do the same job and probably just as well or even better.
• "Homework seminar" - this was an idea to try to help students who were having trouble with their coursework by having a set time once a week where students could come and receive help with any coursework that caused them trouble. One person was there most every time, sometimes 2-4, and all who came did get help and usually came again, but doing something like this for just one person is not effective enough to be worth it. We will continue this, but in some other form. maybe in the student lobby, and in the middle of the day instead of after classes, to improve accessibility. 

Work with the faculty

• Teaching seminar with the new TA-s - probably one of the biggest impact factor things I have done in the past year was the weekly seminar I ran with all the teaching assistants where the aim was to support one-another in the first year of teaching. Teaching is initially quite hard, and I realized that with 8 new teaching assistants being hired, it would be good to find a way to give them some support with their teaching.
  
  When I began, I got it from Anne Villems, who is somewhat of an adoptive grandmother for me and constantly cheered me on, even when I was doing really bad at teaching. If not for her, I would have quite probably quit, but since she helped me on, I wanted to pay it forward. I even went to a mentoring course, but quickly realized I could not play quite the same role as Anne did for me - lacking the required experience. Nevertheless, something had to be done, and I decided to play on the idea of a support group - which worked quite well for the first semester, as TA-s came and discussed teaching, both the problems and the ideas for improvements they were having.
  
  It was incredible watching people develop in their understanding of teaching and also seeing their skills clearly and visibly improve. My role in the whole thing was to keep this going, as the group itself was who did most of the work. However, it seemed that the seminar was crucial in keeping the motivation to teach well, both for me and for many of the TA-s, and many of the participants got very into the topic because of it.
  
• Teaching seminar with the senior faculty - this was an idea we copied from physics institute, which had been holding the teaching seminar for half a year by then. The seminar met once a month and it was more structured than the TA seminar, always having a topic and generally also having some basis for the discussion.
  
  This seminar did not work as well as hoped, probably due to my own priorities being often elsewhere, resulting in me leading the seminar with very little preparation. As time progressed, fewer and fewer people showed up, although with those who did, it generally led to quite practical and insightful discussions and I found I had quite a bit to learn from my older colleagues. We also organized a peer review process with the participants, which it might be useful to introduce to the rest of the faculty as well. In short, it could have worked better, but it was still quite helpful, especially if something similar is continued in the future.
• Recruiting young TA-s from Bachelor's students - one of the main problems in our faculty is that our most talented students are steered away from careers in academia by going to work in the private sector, often in their second year of studies. In an attempt to remedy this situation (along with the shortage of teaching faculty) we decided to offer some of the best bachelor's students a part-time position as teaching assistants for the first year programming course.
  
  We interviewed 8 of the most promising candidates, giving me my first experiences of job interviewing. All 8 were quite different, but they all have potential to be very good teachers. One of the more senior TA-s will hold a weekly seminar with them (akin to the TA seminar I held) next semester. In general, I am very optimistic, especially in that this is a very good way of retaining talent and guiding them towards a career in teaching - something society badly needs right now.

Institute advertisment

• Advertisment materials - I also wrote or helped write quite a bit of advertisment materials, both for the CS curriculum as well as for the faculty as a whole. Although I do not pride myself in being a great writer, I do tend to produce quite good text quite quickly (once even surprising one of my colleagues by managing to write a small 400-word column about TEDx for the university magazine in exactly an hour) and as very few others are interested in writing in our faculty, people often come to me when something needs writing, and are rarely disappointed with the result. 
• School visits  - I had the honour of visiting nearly a dozen schools in the past year to tell the students there about why University of Tartu is a good place to study and why Computer Science matters. Half of these visits were with a mathematician colleague of mine (which were more about math and CS), whereas the other half were with the prorector of Teaching (being more about UT in general). As both my co-presenters were very interesting people and good at what they do, I had a lot to learn, both at presentations and in drives there and back. 

Quite a bit, when looking back on all of it.

In any case, now it is time for a vacation. Back in august.

I hurt Myself Today

I fell for the second time this year with my bike. Tore my pants and my knee in both cases, but nothing too bad.

I've been reading up on microeconomic theory this semester - first, MIT video lectures on microeconomics and now a book on Incentives. The main model in the latter is the utility function balancing effort at work with leisure time. Makes one think.

M. put it very well today, when I mentioned in passing that next semester is going to be hell for me: "You have done "Working yourself to death" to death already. You need to come up with something better if you want a reaction." So, instead of complaining how everything is out of balance, I should probably start accepting the fact that I actually want it that way (at least on some level - since it seems to be a stable equilibrium) and stop complaining.

A year ago, when I started as a curriculum manager, I believed that huge change could be brought about in a year by making a few bigger changes. Today, in talking with one of my bosses, I realized that my view has since shifted. I still believe big change to be possible and that I have played a role in bringing it about, but I now also understand that its not about huge changes that make a drastic difference but much more about many smaller things each of which is barely noticeable but which together tend to add up.

I have also come to understand just how much inertia big systems tend to have, so in university, for the effects to be visible, it takes time. Not good in terms of job satisfaction if you're the impatient kind. I am.

Example of a little thing: I have recently been analyzing student graduation data and yesterday, I managed to fit a model that seems to be able to quite accurately predict the percentage of graduating for each student after the first year of their studies. There are about 10 students each year whose scores fall in the 40-60% i.e. who need to pull their act together if they are to graduate. I'm hoping that if we start informing them of this fact, they will be more inclined to do so and instead of just 5 of them graduating, we might get 1-3 extra. As I said - small things, but they do tend to add up.

Somewhat melancholic today, and in a mood to ruminate about it. I get that every now and then, and I suppose that to a degree it is okay, assuming I don't sink completely and hopelessly into it. Thankfully, I have managed to surround myself with people who just don't let me - and I thank you all for that. But for now, I want a few hours in my bubble...

Student days

Nearly a month without posting again. Initially due to too much work, now due to not enough. Yes, least for me there is a hair-thin sweet spot - too little and I start feeling guilty, too much and I get exhausted.

Anyways, last week has been pretty nice.

Student days started with a night singing festival, which I attended with my girlfriend (TK from now, as T. is taken) and which was very enjoyable - partly because I love singing but partly because the person I was with seemed to do the same.

The next day one of my friends called me and asked me to join her at night orienteering competition. It was unexpected but I gladly joined her. The night (which started at 9 and ended at 3) was quite enjoyable, me mostly cycling around to get the further-out points while my two team-mates walked to the ones closer by. TK briefly joined us, but then had to get back home to study and sleep.

On saturday, I had yet another team event planned: student extreme. This involved spraying onlookers with cold water from a hose, being tossed around in a wooden wheel and then climbing inside a 45 degree pipe with people tossing water on us from above. After this hell of an ordeal, the team split up - me having to go through yet another pipe, this time horizontal, but spinning on its axis. Thakfully, this did not require any arm strength and so I made it through and past the finish line - not feeling my arms and being wet from the water thrown in the first pipe. My teammates had both taken an opportunity to swim in the river, though - and oh how I envied them.

A quick change of clothes at home (I forgot to bring a spare to the event) and then I was off to a birthday party of a collaegue. Most of the night was spent talking to R.E. and T.T., who met there face to face first time).

Sunday evening, I had Indrek and K. come over. They brought cake.

Monday, I dragged myself to work, but did not really get much done there. At some point I decided to call it a day and we went for a bike ride with T.K. - nice weather, beautiful nature and towards the end - sun setting. Idyllic. She confessed that at the moment, everything in her life was as she wanted - and I conceded the same for myself.

After sending her off to her place, I cycled back to the office, then home and then off to L. for a barbacue celebrating the beginning of spring. The remnants of the cake found their quick and satisfying end, and the evening ended with playing with fire - literally (but thankfully not getting burnt yet). 

Perfection

It is weird but every now and then I still hear of people who sincerely believe me to be perfect in some sense, i.e. being able to do no wrong, or being good at everything or some such other weirdness.

Depending on my mood, I sometimes try to prove these people wrong by deliberately failing, or vice versa, try to comply with their expectations. However, reality is I am just human, both with my strengths and my weaknesses, and most often I just want people to understand that I am, in fact, just like everyone else, no better, no worse - as I feel quite bad when others think of themselves as less than me.

My main strength is my rational mind, which seems to make academic things (school, university, research) easier for me than for most other people. I was recently blamed for not ever having to learn how to learn, for it has always come easy to me. And it indeed has. In terms of school learning, I have found most things that have been taught to me to be interesting, and have thus only very rarely struggled with motivation when it came to school, and mostly for that reason, school has in fact always come naturally to me. As of yet, I know of very few others around me who has been this lucky.

My main weakness is understanding social situations and other people, and most importantly - myself. Having been raised in a city environment as an only child of a single parent, I have mostly lacked both situations and people to learn good social skills from. It has only been the past few years during which I have found the people and quite deliberately put myself in the situations that I can indeed learn from. Nevertheless, many people around me have expected me to be quite a lot further along in this respect, and I have lost at least one very important person for me for the reason I was not. I have taken long steps in this respect in the past few years, especially in the past year and a half - but unlike school learning, this is not something that has ever come easily or naturally to me. In fact, quite the opposite. Nevertheless, it has been a priority, and I have worked quite hard to get as far as I now am - mostly by constantly pushing my comfort zone in hopes of expanding it and learning about both life and myself - which has, by no means, been easy.

Trouble is - most people cannot understand this struggle, as for them, these things have come naturally, and they expect this is the same for everyone. "You think too much", they often say. In reality, I don't - for it has been this same thinking a lot that has gotten me as far as I am now. This is not to say I do not think of the wrong things often, but confusing it with thinking too much definitely does not help. What has helped me to be where I am is my faith that everyone can learn everything that he wishes to, if he is willing to put in the effort .

As for perfection - there is no such thing - or if there were, we should feel sorry for it, for it has nowhere to develop anymore so it's life must be pretty boring. To err is to be human - and this is something that should never be forgotten.

Nostalgia

These past few days I have had a strong surge of nostalgia, remembering different times and places from the past.

There have been surface reasons for it - an old classmate (from middle school) dying, a visit to that same school building (and seeing some of my old teachers).

However, I think there is a deeper reason that is more important. Life is changing around me at a pace that feels too fast for me, so I am looking for things in the past to hold on to... and not finding much. Sure, there are old and good friends, but even with them the relationship is different (although probably better) from what it used to be. And I am still living in the same place I have been for the past 6 years, but with my neighbor now moving, it has also become somewhat different.

The biggest change in my life has been entering a relationship - one that might actually last, since it is based neither on desperation nor illusions of perfection. If I had one word to describe the experience, it would be "scary" - mostly because of all the thing it had dredged up from inside me. Thankfully, she has been very understanding and will hopefully continue to be so in the future.

There is also some uncertainty about the future in terms of my career, as I still have no clear plan of what direction I want to take my life, but it seems that the decision time is approaching rapidly.

In many ways, I feel quite similar to the time roughly a year ago. Like another chapter of my life is drawing to a close and another one is starting. If this is true, it is the time to reminisce and reflect before marching on.