The House Project, part II: now we are official owners of “real estate”: a piece of land in Tampere City area, plus buildings on top of it. It feels good to move the process forward, even if the bank loan is terrifying, of course. I must say that the property sales process in Finland is complex and archaic process, even. It is impossible to buy anything without all people that are involved being physically present in the sales situation, and a formal witness is needed from local court (a process based on “maakaari”, real estate law that goes way back in history), plus bank personnel, plus the property dealer. From what I heard, it should be possible to make electronic deals at some point in the future, but not now. What next… Well, preparing for moving, making all those interior plans more concrete and detailed — and as economically feasible as possible (my accounts are rather thin this after yesterday’s deal). But: this was an exiting step to do!
Month: January 2007
Touring During January and February
Looking at my calendar, I will be mostly in Finland during this Spring (this is at least what I imagine at the moment). There are few engagements in the coming weeks worth listing here:
- in January 16th to 20th I will be participating in the IPerG workshop and planning pervasive gaming research (in Palma de Mallorca, nice!)
- in January 25th I will be in Joensuu, examining the licentiate thesis of Leena Vartiainen that is related to live roleplaying, arts and crafts and virtual communities
- the following day, January 26th, I will be giving a talk in Forum Dynamo conference, titled Games Cultures & Games Literacy (PDF brochure)
- in the 1st of February, I will be talking in Youth, Media and Library — Back to the Future seminar in Tikkurila about Cultures of Games and Cultures of Play
- following Monday, 5th of February, I will speak in Tietoturvaviikot event in Helsinki (Online Safety Week) about Net Cultures, Now and in the Future
And then there will be the bi-weekly PhD & MA seminar of game studies that I will be running during this spring; welcome. As there are also other lectures, classes and several research projects and other work going on, it appears that I will have no difficulty in filling my hours this spring, either. 🙂
The House Project
If I have been a bit quiet lately, much of it is caused by The House Project: we are finally moving on in our plans (dating back few years already) of buying a house. Now we have signed a contract on a nice one (detached house, in three floors, in Tampere city region), but this is where the real work just starts. During the last couple of weeks I have been learning more about house construction and building material details, about heating systems and insulation, about air ducts and floors than I thought would ever be necessary for me. Then there is the negotiations with banks and bureaucrats, insurance companies and real estate salesmen. At some point in the shady near future is waiting the actual change of residence, and meanwhile, reading and sketching wildly, there are the decisions related to home design, home electronics and data traffic design, home security design, garden design. Well, ok: maybe the garden design part can still wait a bit. But we now have the preliminary garden design outline created already, nevertheless. And I also already have some pretty detailed ideas about the cellar-level home theatre room that will house most of my computers, game consoles and other AV tech. (No chance I would get those into the living room, I was told. But underground is optimum in any case: soundproofing and concealing the daylight is much easier to achieve underground.) More later.
frans goes blog 