Thank you, UEF staff!

A funny thing happened last Friday. Earlier this summer, around June the management of the UEF offered a gift as a compensation for the hard work during the COVID-19 spring period and there were few places listed for which you could request a gift-card (same sum for each), including a restaurant, cafeteria, bookstore, and health club. I'm not going to talk about if everyone deserved this, most of the people probably worked fewer hours than normal according to my experience, but then there were also a lot of people who over-exceeded their normal working time by many times. I would say, that I tried to keep it as similar as possible, but I must admit that the course of the days was different and I was actually able to do a lot of writing (manuscripts, grant application), more than I could imagine, since there was less interruption in my days, of course. But on the other side, I worried all the time that I wasn't present to my group members as much as I would have liked to be... And in the beginning, in March, most of the people were just learning how to use e-communication software, so there was a lot of fewer meeting in the beginning, but unfortunately, the amount of them gradually increased as the summer was approaching... Luckily then came the summer break! :)

Anyway, about the gift-card, I selected something that would benefit not only me, but my dearest ones, so it chose the gift-card to a restaurant called Morton. And last Friday, as it was such a sunny day and I've got the feeling that summer was slowly ending and the autumn with new COVID-19 wave is coming, that it's better to use the gift-card before this restaurant closes its doors, forever. Morton is a street-food burger restaurant with a small sea container kitchen and outside tables, so many times there is a queue, for us, it was about 30-40 min waiting. And just when we sat down to wait for our burgers, a band started to play around the corner in front of the Sisko-tyttö statue. And guess who was singing in the street-band... our rector! So as a thanks-giving from the UEF, I didn't only receive a free dinner with my family, but also a free dinner accompanied by UEF rector's songs. :)

Read more about Morton from their webpages (this link).