Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

What Finland Is Doing Right, I Don’t Know

People often ask me, “how is it in Finland,” and why Finland is doing so well with the pandemic.
I do not know what to say. Mask just recently started to be worn everywhere, and when I was visiting, people were still dining in, and I saw a lot of people inside bars and restaurants through the windows. Moreover, the number of tests is relatively modest. But somehow, they do it right; somehow, they know how to test the right slice of the population because the number of people in the hospitals, in ICU, and on the ventilators is remarkably small.

Finland’s population is 5.5 million people, which is a little bit less than half of Illinois ( 12.6 million).

At the moment, we have:
Illinois Finland
total deaths 14,000 414
current in hospitals 5,653 141
current ICU 1,134 21
current ventilators. 694 0 , although I do not have todays’

I already told you about the testing at the airport; this time, the result also came in 12 hours, and there was no line for testing. However, it was virtually impossible to get the second test three days after arrival, so apparently, that was already not in the national interest :). They have their models to follow, and as long as the results are as good as above, I thing they are doing the right thing 🙂

What’s Next?

Where did these past three days go? I do not even know! Three and a half days since I returned, and it is work and work, and lots of different online activities. And the book is not moving again. 

On Tuesday, I had two online events after work. One of them was a victory celebration with our Stand with Women group. We talked about the memorable moments of the past several months, which lead to our victory (I mentioned Anna canvassing with two small children!), and then we talked about “what’s next.’

Everybody started to talk about the Georgia Senate race, and phone banking, and all related things. And I said: my goal for the upcoming year is to help to bridge a Big Divide. I repeated all my thoughts from this post. 

I recalled the beginning of the Obama presidency and how people got upset so quickly. And about this half of the country, which voted for Trump. 

BTW, my direct report told me yesterday that he can’t understand how anybody could vote for Trump. 

I said that we need to talk to people, and some of the participants said that you could never convert a Republican, and arguing on Facebook is just a waste of time. I told him that the part of the crowd that is silently listening to the argument is the one we are influencing from my experience. And then I decided that it is not worth arguing 🙂

I stopped arguing, but I am planning to have it as my goal for the year, along with practical support.

My Talk At PostgresBuild2020

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

I’ve already advertised my talk at PostgresBuild2020, but now I have an official image, so I can advertise it one more time. Also, all the talks are recorded, so my talk is technically done:). I will be still there, listening to myself :), and there will be ten minutes of questions.

To be honest, if I would know in advance that I will need to record my session, most likely I won’t submit a proposal. But when I submitted and it got accepted – there was no way out :).

The conference is virtual, as everything these days, and it will be in the GMT timezone, which means that those of my friends and colleagues who can’ attend Chicago PUG due to the timezone difference, will get a chance to listen to the NORM talks.

The registration is free – click here!

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Glogg!

The biggest food/drink discovery of that visit to Helsinki – glogg! I have no idea why I didn’t try it before; it’s not the first time I am in Helsinki during the season. Perhaps, the previous visits at this time of the year were too brief, and also I could not imagine it is that different from what you can buy at IKEA… 

My only regret is that I didn’t buy any to take with me, although I had checked luggage. For some reason, I thought they might have it in a duty-free at the airport, and they didn’t…

Session Recording – I Do Not Think I Will Ever Do It Again!

If I could only imagine that the preparation for my talk at the PostgresBuild conference would take almost two days, I would never submit my talk proposal! A fun fact is that I invested a lot of time to submit a proposal for my bitemporal short tutorial, which was such a success at October Chicago PUG, and it was my last-minute decision to add one more proposal – for the NORM talk.

Then, just this last-minute-not-so-much-thought proposal got accepted. Only after it was accepted, I learned that it has to be only 30 minutes, and only after that, I learned that should be recorded! 

Do not take me wrong; I understand the organizers. With the tight schedule as it is, nobody wants technical difficulties at the moment of presentation. But imagine what does it take to record a tutorial! 

I had to record screen videos for several slides; I had to adjust their timing several times to make sure the whole presentation fits in 30 minutes. Then I had to come up with the background because they had very specific requirements. It turned out that my Mac Air is not powerful enough to have a custom background for zoom., so I had to move to the work laptop. Then – black sweater and makeup.

During my first full recording, I when six minutes over. When I started to record one more time, ten minutes into the recording, I realized that Boris left one extra field in the picture. (I asked him to re-draw the picture we used for the NORM talk in Cyprus to go with my new training example. Previously, he already re-drawn it for the book, and then one extra field from the airlines example was left. Good thing I had to re-recode! If not these six minutes extra, I won’t re-record, and it will still have an error in the presentation! 

Then I started recording from the updated slide, and then six minutes before the presentation’s end, Boris’s phone rang – with a spam call! 

We spend another hour and a half figuring out how to combine several pieces on QuickTime – this app has its ways of thinking what’s right!

There is one visible gap in the final presentation, but I decided I can’t do it any longer! 

My Very Rare Family Time

I am on my way back to Chicago. It was a strange trip, for sure. After being on that overbooked UA flight, I regretted my decision to go and thought that Boris is right that we should not make too many moves during a pandemic.

In Helsinki, the situation was not the same as when I was there in October. They have way more cases than previously. Although it’s still way less than in Illinois, and the number of deaths, hospitalized patients, and patients in ICU is microscopic compared to our number, more restrictions are still instilled.

That meant that we didn’t go to any concerts, and in general did less outside home. Although this time we were biking together again.

Another factor that influenced how I felt was my panic about the speed with which our book is going and that we are behind all possible deadlines. And finally, the fact that I needed to record my presentation for the conference!

At some point, I asked Boris whether he thought it was the right idea for me to travel. He said that he hoped that I was able to relax. And the surprising thing is that it was true!

When I decided to go, I joked that it was the most expensive way to avoid holiday cooking and cleaning. But the fact is that for the whole week, I didn’t cook a single meal, didn’t wash a single plate, and didn’t do laundry. And I did only fun shopping if anything.

Although Boris had to teach a class this week and had some work meetings and some work in general, he allowed me to concentrate on writing 100%. And I am really thankful for that!
Also, I completely forgot that I wanted to print our logo on a t-shirt. And that Boris also wanted a t-shirt with this logo, and even bought a white t-shirt for that. We did it on Sunday – and that’s what I just posted:) (I wrote it yesterday but forgot to publish)

The Logo…

… which we created for our training course a year ago – now on my T-shirt 🙂

Stockmann Window

More of Helsinki Holiday Lights

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Helsinki Holiday Lights

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