Conference Day 2

The second day of the conference also started with a run. I love running in different cities because it is a great way to see parts of the city you often don’t get to. I took some pictures today.

This is looking out to Soumenlinna (which I will tell you more about later) from the the city.

This another island just across the water. There are thousands of islands along the southern coast.

Here is a morning ferry heading Tallinn, Estonia which is only 30km away according to one of the conference participants. I can’t verify that at the moment as I’m laying in my bed but that seems kind of close.
The run was nice as it helps with the jet lag and gave me the chance to see Helsinki wake up.
Being a two day conference this was the last day as well. It sounds short but I sat in 16 different sessions in the two days. That’s a lot of ideas being proposed. Some of the topics today were more interesting to me: Fandom and Religion, Pentavangelical Glocalisation in the West Cape of South Africa, Leonard Cohen as a Modern Troubadour, Religionless Christianity in Mumford and Sons, the appropriation of social media in British evangelical aid organisations and the religious undertones of Lego’s Ninjago and Chima. That last one was presented by a Norwegian woman whose PhD thesis was on virginity in late Antiquity. Little did you know, eh? A picture just so that you believe me.

Also, during a break I ran an errand and came upon this dude on a smoke break from the construction site wearing knicker work pants.

Pragmatic fashion.
The conference filled the whole of the day. It was interesting and an enjoyable time for myself and reminded me of what my undergrad mentor once told me, with PhD. you know more and more about less and less until you know all there is about absolutely nothing. In this case it is a turn on that phrase in that it is the realization that I know less and less about more and more until I know absolutely nothing about all there is. Hopefully that is also a lesson in traveling the world. It’s a big world and we really don’t know much about it.
The other lesson of travel I also experienced at the conference, we are all human beings and pretty interesting if we get to know each other. There were people from 19 different countries at the conference and most were really fun to spend time with. I was the only American I met so I freely represented the other 316,999,999 of you all with my opinions. I heard more variety of British accents in one room than I had before and also heard a Senegalese Sufi worship band who. Closed out the conference. Academics can be boring and we can criticize them for having their heads in the clouds or being irrelevant but the truth borne out to me was that the exchange of ideas is very important for moving things forward.
Any way time to sleep.