I left Polokwane on Thursday and travelled with Satu, Rolda and Anna to Pretoria. Me and Anna jumped out the car at CSIR/Meraka where Ilkka and Erkki were greeting us. Together we went to the house which has been rented for the researchers and professors of the satellite campus University of Eastern Finland (UEF, is Univ. of Joensuu until the end of this year). It was very hectic in Polokwane and stay at UEF’s campus at Meraka Institute hasn’t been any calmer. On Friday we had the pleasure to meet the Finnish Ambassador of South Africa who was kind enough to pay a visit to the opening ceremony of the founding phase of the UEF campus at Meraka. Although the ambassador obviously is a very busy lady, she listened through all our talks and seemed to be genuinely interested in what’s going on at the new UEF campus.
The campus project has kicked off pretty well and we’ve already made new friends and of course reunited with old ones. Meraka was very kind to offer us an old meeting room as our first office to get started with. The room has a large table, about 20 chairs and cabinets at back. With some inspiration I hope we’ll be able to turn it into a relaxed working environment for creative minds. First step is to get proper equipment. I already carried with me from Finland small video projectors, laptops, video cameras, audio recorders and all sorts of necessary gadgets. Yesterday we went shopping for more equipment such as a printer, tripod, cables, WLAN routers etc. Anton also brought a couple of neat tablet pcs. I think with these instruments we can really start making some great research together with South African colleagues.
Among all the busyness with setting up the office, I had some time last night and today to finish a paper which I intend to submit to Pervasive 2010 conference. The paper will present a brand new architecture for developing viable and portable pervasive learning spaces. I feel lucky because this conference is held in Helsinki which means that I will save lots of money from traveling costs. It is kind of sad that one has to choose a conference not based on its scientific value but based on geographic location (i.e. the closer the better). I wish I would have a decent pool of money for traveling to conferences so I wouldn’t have to worry about that.
Now, here are some pictures which I finally managed to upload. There are shots from Meraka/Pretoria and from University of Limpopo.

University of Eastern Finland Office

Mr. Thato sharing a morning tea

EdTech Reunion

Erkki and Mike having an interesting discussion on Monday

Barbeque at Satu’s place – Ashes and Robert form 2/3 of the Team Joensuu in Limpopo

Sometimes life of a vegan has simple ingredients

Anna (1/3 of the Team Joensuu), Mike and Erkki. Thanks, Mike, for the meal!

Lunch party in Limpopo

Long hours of database definition

Erkki addressing the Finnish Ambassador (third lady from left)

The ambassador addressing the audience. We have a video recording of the event so hopefully we’ll have time to release part of the footage soon.

Sometimes even researchers must eat (yes, we are not machines)

Shopping for the new campus

Serious work at the UEF campus at Meraka

Just not to spoil the entire Saturday with working, we had a nice drive around Pretoria. It seems that the country is getting ready for next June.

Lovely sunset over the Pretoria downtown.

Another attempt to capture the sunset.

At the Union Buildings.
That’s all, folks!