Summer School in TUT

From 10/08/09 to 14/08/09, I’ve attended the International Summer School which was held in Tampere University of Technology (TUT) in Finland. The summer school basically focus on optical devices such laser lasers, fibers, photovoltaic, and nanoplasmonic. My supervisor, Prof. John David asked me to attend it.

Every time when I said to others that I’m going to summer school, people looked puzzled. Then, they asked me back, do you go there to teach students? Haha. The answer is NO. I go there to become a student. Activities from from 9 am to 5 pm are lectures. Most of people don’t know that there is a summer school for PhD students. In fact, most of the participants are already in their 2^nd or 3^rd year of PhD.

I flew with Finnair from Manchester to Helskini, and then took transit flight to Tampere. The journey from UK to Finland is approximately 2 hours 30 mins.

During the summer school, I stayed at Hotel Hermica, which is located few hundred metres away from the university. The hotel was quite expensive even though it is just a 2 star hotel (I think). The rate for 1 night is 59 euro. The internet was not free. It will cost you 10 euro per hour (I think nobody use the hotel’s internet. Anyway, we still can use internet at the university). Each room has a TV with lots of movies, but all of them are not free. One movie will cost you 8 euro. Only public TV channel are free.

All of the invited speakers are a well-known figure in their field. Most of them are from Europe and one from US. I also have the chance to personally talk and discuss with some of them i.e. Prof. Keith Barnham (quantum well solar cells) from Imperial College, Prof. Judy Rorison (dilute nitride) from Bristol and Prof. Peter Blood (Quantum Dots) from Cardiff. I also got a lot of new friends. A few that are quite closed to me are Ben Royall from Essex (doing dilute nitride solar cells), Pal from Norway (doing Raman spectroscopy) and Igor from Paris (doing Er doped lasers).

According to one of the professor in TUT, one of their companies is doing research in pico-projector (very small projector) which can be incorporated in mobile phones. He told that by 2012, most of the latest mobile phones in the market will be equipped with a pico-projector. So, let’s see whether he is right.

After 5 pm

On Wednesday evening, they bring us to the city centre and main attractions in Tampere. They also hire professional tour guides to brief us about the history and important info about the city. Some of you may already know that NOKIA (the mobile phone company) was born in Finland. But I believe most of you do not know that their first business was making papers (because Finland has many trees). Then, they shift to rubber business (i.e making tires). After that making televisions and finally mobile phones (until now). This info was told by the tour guide.

Then, they bring us to a sports academy where we had our dinner and sauna party. Sauna is a norm in Finland. Normally, they have sauna at least twice a week and most houses have their own sauna. The sports academy has many sauna rooms which can accommodate all of us (around 120 people). The sauna place is also located in front of a beautiful lake. So, after we had our sauna, we jumped into the lake to swim. After feeling a bit chilly, go up and continue another round of sauna,………. It is also a norm for Finnish to be naked in the sauna. In my sauna room, from 12 people, 8 of them were naked. Hahaha. I just can’t imagine being surrounded by naked people. Besides, Finnish people also like to drink cold beer while in the sauna. There was a live band performance as well.

On Thursday evening, we went to a beautiful lake in Hervantaa and then went hiking. Their forest has lots of pine trees, mushrooms and berries. That’s why mushroom and berries picking is quite popular over there (in England, strawberry picking only. Hehe).

FOODS

Every day, I had my breakfast in the hotel (included with the rent). They provide the same breakfast for the whole duration of my stay; oat porridge, potatoes with herbs, cereals, breads, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, juice and hot drinks. I had my lunch at the university café. The café served quite heavy and variety of foods such as rice, mashed potatoes, pasta, etc. I really like their café. In England, café only sells boring stuff like sandwiches, salads and drinks. Everyday, they prepare at least 2 vegetarian meals and occasionally seafood. So, there was no problem for me in term of foods. I salute them for making really really nice vegetarian foods. For lunch, we can take the main meals, bread, salads, juice and milk.

I also found a few halal restaurants/take away when I was there. In Hervantaa (the place where TUT is located, around 8km from Tampere city centre), there is a Halal kebab shop called Jalapenos located on the same road with Duo shopping mall (in front of TUT). The owner of the shop is a Turkish man. In Tampere city centre, there is another halal kebab shop located exactly in front of the train station.

The summer school ended on Friday evening. After that I went for holiday at Helsinki for 4 days. I will write about my Helsinki experience in the next entry. Bye.