Vol 20 issue 22

INSIDER 20.04.2018 | VOL. 20 | ISSUE 22

STUDENT MAGAZINE OF XAMK

EDITORIAL STAFF

Stela Demaj Kouvola Current Affairs

Lingli Jing Profile

Hafsa Farah Kouvola Current Affairs

Van-Trang Le Kouvola Current Affairs

Minh-Trang Le Recipes

Long Nguyen Layout Editor

Trung Dao Kouvola Current Affairs

Nikita Munenko Kouvola Current Affairs

Hugh Clack Editor in Chief

INSIDER STUDENT MAGAZINE South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences Paraatikenttä 7 45100 Kouvola Editor in Chief: Hugh Clack INSIDER ISSN 1457-1587  /INSIDERSTUDENTMAGAZINE 2

PHONE +358 44 702 8758 WEBSITE insider.xamk.fi EMAIL insider@xamk.fi

EDITORIAL

Hi lads and lasses!

Will you look at that, it is the last issue of the school year. How is it even possible? Didn’t I just write my first recipe for fluffy pancakes yesterday? A year passed by as quick as it could be, which really makes you think what on earth you have been doing for the past months.

Either way, us Insider staff brought you our usual articles this week.

Hafsa is back at it again with the compelling book review, our girl really reads a lot. Stela shared with us her review on an amazing album by Leif – our former Insider staff, (who will come back next year!) alongside with a QR code so you can conveniently listen to his tracks while reading our magazine. Lingli got off her usual Profile segment and gave us some helpful traveling tips in China that you can make use of in your next trip to her country. We also got an intriguing article on Origami by Trung and another movie review by Nikita. Trang brought us two articles this week: her StartUp Passion experience and another mouth-watering recipe.

As for me, I wrote a review on SIMULACRA – a horror game that you might want to check out.

And there you go, the last issue of the year. As always, we hope you have a good read. There will be lots of changes in our team next year but our ultimate goal is always to bring you quality entertainment and useful tips. Have a fun summer and see y’all soon!

Minh-Trang Le 3

MUSIC REVIEW

This year I have noticed that talented students in our university haven’t been noticed by a majority of students in the campus. I, myself know a lot of people that have hidden talents, like acting, singing, painting or creating cool shit like music.

It sounds pretty cool right? I don’t know how many students reading Insider are into electronic flows but to whomever that is a fan of this awesome genre of music, you’re gonna love this article.

In this issue I will write about a creative student from Xamk’s Kouvola campus that has a talent of making his own thoughts turn into progressive electronic melodies.

Grayson Leif just turned 28 and it’s a student from IB16 and he started making music when he was 21. I recently listened to some of his tracks during a field trip, I was pretty tired of travelling so I needed some dope music to calm my mind and get away from all the assignments waiting for me back in Kouvola. I don’t really have the right words to explain his music in a decent way but I would conclude it by saying that it’s inspiring and even the people that aren’t into the whole progressive electronic vibe will appreciate it as well.

The name of the album was inspired from the country Leif is leaving at the moment and it’s called “Revontulet Suomessa” meaning “The Northern Lights in Finland” and below you will find the bar codes you can use to listen to his tracks.

- Stela Demaj -

4

O R I G A M I

I remember when I was as little as those kids in the kindergartens, my mom crafted a flower out of paper and got me so excited. She said that particular flower symbolized friendship and told me to give it to the ones who I deemed good friends at the time. It was the first time I saw something so aesthetic that I kept it for my own and displayed it at the front of my little desk. I asked her to teach me how to make the flower and it was the first piece of origami that I made.

Origami in Japanese literally means folding paper. If I were to describe origami to people for better understanding, it is the combination of art and engineer kind of stuff. It’s just so aesthetic with a pinch of mathematics and some of the models are like masterpiece made by the hands of god. When I got to primary school, I took origami as one of my hobbies and I still keep it as one until now. I used to have a cupboard full of origami models I learned from my parents and from the instruction books they bought for me but I ended up having to put them away to clear out the space for other things. When I got to highschool, many of the presents I give to my friends for their birthdays or Christmas or something similar were all made by me with the origami. I don’t know but for me, handmade presents like that are more personal and attain a higher level of closeness and it shows how dextrous I can be so yeah, it’s good. It was so easy to give away presents when girls were not all about lipstick and makeups and stuff like that.

But I guess I’m old fashioned and tedious then.

- Trung Dao -

5

GAME REVIEW

Hi chaps! This is my last article of the year before the excruciating exam week and a (hopefully) eventful summer. I decided to write a review on a game that, again, has left me terrified and questioning my whole existence.

SIMULACRA is an interactive thriller which sets place on a mobile phone’s interface. As the player, you have found a missing phone which looks like it belongs to this girl whose name is Anna. Switching through the apps, you gradually discover numerous segments of information which once being pieced together, disclose a horrifying story about the owner of the phone.

From my experience, the thing that makes SIMULACRA scary is it focuses immensely on realism. It is said that all the people that you have interacted with are real actors, the pictures and videos were also taken and filmed at real locations. At some points, the phone had bizarre glitches and jump-scares, which adds more horrific factors to the experience.

What I like about SIMULACRA is how the developers managed to transcend those nervewrecking moments only through a vertically interface of a virtual mobile phone. The game occasionally gave me chills while playing it even with the smallest details. Another aspect is how you have to think long and hard before making any decision, or trying to link all the information together. It is like a puzzle game being mingled with a horror game, which doubled the fun.

In the end, with the help of my pals, I managed to reach the good ending after 4 hours of playing non-stop. SIMULACRA is no doubt, worth a try. It’s currently on Steam for only $4.99 so buy it and play at your own risks!

- Minh Trang Le 6

#GIRLBOSS Well written biography book, authored by Sofia Amoruso and published in 2014.

Young Sophia Amoruso, presently a Founder and Executive Chairman of Nasty Gal, was a young care free.

She was bouncing job to job looking for a passion at the time and being fearless teenager helped her tackle the first steps of experiencing everything from shoplifting, hitchhiking from the west coast to landing in the pacific northwest, working on various places to eventually starting an eBay store Nasty Gal Vintage. By selling vintage clothes, bought from other vintage stores, not only did she sell, but styled and captured it well. eventually, made Nasty Gal vintage to standout from other competitors.

“You can’t act like you’ve arrived when you’re only just receiving the invitation.” ― Sophia Amoruso, #GIRLBOSS

Giving her a chance to interact with her clients and meeting their demands. Fast forward, she later launched online store.

Nasty Gal.com, that went from eBay store to a business that sells to over 60 countries with larger consumer.

This book unveils her story, discusses the ups and downs and guides you through with advice. It’s a must-read book Girlboss.

Hafsa Farah 7

StartUp Passion Kick Off

Picture by Dana Lihotina You must have noticed that almost every Insider issue in the recent time there would an article about the program called StartUp Passion (SUP). Why am I so keen on writing about this specific program? Because it is just too awesome and incredible for me. That’s all!

How? Let me tell you about our last week trip to Riga – where we had a chance to take part in the 4-day SUP Kickoff training program.

On the first day, basically we just arrived in Riga, spent time walking around the city and getting to know people. I was happy a lot to meet again my favorite human being from Mikkeli campus – Amanda and this time I got to know Alisa – another favorite human being of mine after Riga trip. After wandering a bit, we managed to find a cozy coffee shop with chilling jazz music and nice drinks to warm up. How lovely it was, and the best part was its shockingly cheap price menu comparing to Finland’s while maintaining very good quality.

Hot chocolate, chai tea latte with chocolate fondant and we got a nice chitchatting together.

By the evening we headed back to Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE) – our host, to have our dinner and meet last year’s winner team.

Picture by Dana Lihotina 8

What happened during the next 3 days was intensive.

The training program started at 10.00 and usually ended around 17.00 or 18.00. We were given very informative lectures about design thinking and ideation tool. I have always been considering myself as an individual who has absolutely no ability to focus on a lecture for more than 20 minutes, but not in this case. All the theories we were shown along with real life example and we

were asked to apply what we had acquired into our startup idea. By that way, I found the lectures very useful and suddenly concentrated seriously. Most of the time we were working on our Business Model Canvas and developing constantly throughout the training. It turns out that the very simple concept like BMC that I have been learning for years, is actually much more sophisticated than I know, and that I haven’t made use of it enough to maximize my business idea.

The lesson I got from now on is to dig deeper into everything that seems to be familiar, because there will always be room for more development. Coaches and mentors were helpful and always available for supporting or dealing with any Picture by Trung Dao kind of difficulties we met during our work. To get more motivation, we had an opportunity to listen and met people from successful startups that has stepped out from some startup programs, just like us! My favorite story was about an Estonian-Latvian startup Sorry As A Service. They started their business with a really cool and realistic solution idea for companies that need to outsource some customer service to deal with their fault. I was totally wow by how they met up, generated the idea and how they are running the business remotely now. To wrap up all my experience during the Kickoff, I just have a word to say: awesome. Oh and if you have a chance to, never hesitate to take up new things, you will never know where it will lead you to. Expect the unexpected!

Now let’s get digress from the training a little bit and talking about where we went in general. Riga welcomed us with a dearly nice, warm and sunny weather that I missed it already right the moment we landed Finland airport back to our shaking weather.

Everything was cheaper and more diversified, Latvian people are warm and friendly and they speak English very well! SSE was also a very welcoming host and they catered us with delicious lunches as well as refreshing tea breaks. Since words cannot describe sufficiently and adequately to what eyes can see and what heart can feel, I will let you my beloved readers indulge and feel yourself in this city someday.

- Van Trang Le 9

COCO In our latest issue we will review Coco, the cartoon

by Pixar that won Oscar as the best animated movie.

While Oscar is not the best assessment of a movie, it goes a little bit different with the cartoons as long as there is no politics and exaggerated tolerance in that genre. Is Coco truly the best animated movie of 2017?

It might be. There is nothing much to say about it. The plot is obvious, and the events can be easily predicted.

The actors do a good job on voicing their characters. It is usually more difficult than the actual acting because your voice is your only tool here and if you fail to convince a viewer with it, you will fail as an actor in an animated movie. There are no facial expressions, no gestures. I, for one, was convinced quite well.

However, with that being said, let’s remember that Coco is a movie for children. It might and probably will not be that cool for an adult, but we can understand why it is good for kids. Funny jokes and gags, beautiful animation, nice music and likeable though not really relatable characters make quite a good impression. Feel free to grab your children and go to the cinema theater – they will love it and you will not hate it, which is already a good thing for a cartoon.

 10

Nikita Munenko

Traveling Tips

STUDIO 123 Kymenlaaksonkatu 1 45700 Kuusankoski 044 375 3686 www.studio123.fi 13.04 - 19.04.2018 STUDIO 1 KEDI (S) | 7€ | 1h20min Sat - Sun 15:20 PETTERI KANIINI (7) | 10€ | 1h35min Every evening 17:00 READY PLAYER ONE (12) | 12€ | 2h20min Fri - Mon, Wed - Thu 18:50 PYLLÄTYSLEFFA (S) | 11€ | ?h?min Sat 18:50

Tips for traveling in China Have you decided how to spend your summer vacation? If you’re thinking about traveling outside Europe, then China is definitely one of the most attractive countries to visit.

China officially have four parts, mainland, Hong Kong(SAR), Macau(SAR) and Taiwan. In mainland China, there are more than Beijing and Shanghai, every city has its own charm. For example, Chengdu is a metropolitan which is famous for its food and snacks, hardly any city in China can compare to Chengdu in terms of delicious food. So if you are a foodie, you should definitely add Chengdu to your list of cities to go.

Here are some tips for traveling in mainland China, 1.

Download a vpn in your device. In China, all the social media platforms you’re familiar with can’t be used. So it is extremely important for you to get a vpn before your departure. Google map can’t be used as well, but you can use Baidu map in China, it’s pretty convenient.

2.

Use translation apps. In China, not all the people are good at English, even the youth they might not that good at speaking English.

And usually in restaurants they don’t offer English menus.

3.

Download Didi taxi app or uber. In China, although public transportations like bus and metro are very convenient, but if you want to travel comfortable, why don’t you use Didi taxi or Uber? There are really cheap compared to the prices in Europe.

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (12) | 12€ | ?h?min Wed - Thurs 18:50

STUDIO 2 COCO (7) | 11€ | 1h45min St - Sun 15:00 VIIDAKON VEIJARIT (7) | 10€ | 1h37min Every evening 17:15 HILJAINEN PAIKKA (16) | 11€ | 1h30min Every evening 19:10

STUDIO 3 VIIMEINEN LOMA (12) | 11€ | 1h52min Sat - Sun 19:30 SUOMEN HAUSKIN MIES (12) | 11€ | 1h43min Fri - Mon, Wed 19:30 MADEMOISELLE PARADIS (7) | 11€ | 1h37min Tue, Thurs 17:30 MARIA MAGDALEENA (12) | 11€ | 2h Fri - Sat, Mon - Tue 19:130 Students/armed services, pensioners 1€ discount on all full priced tickets of 10€ or more

In SAR like Hong Kong and Macau, it can be quite different from mainland. Local people there mostly speak good English and you don’t need a vpn to use for example like whatsapp and facebook etc.

Maybe there are some inconveniences visiting mainland China, but it is the most essential part of China, Forbidden city, the Great Wall and the Summer Palace, to get to know everything about the oldest eastern country, you won’t regret to visit.

- Lingli Jing -

11

ASPARAGUS SOUP

Knock knock anyone at home? It’s me summer I’m comingggg! Though a little bit later, but yeah I am also “cooler” than my pals down the more southern countries, aren’t I? Summer vacation means more free time so let’s spend more time cooking. How about getting more smart nutrition? Below is a super green, very simple and definitely ultimate healthy recipe for the summer. And one more to take note, this soup could be your new belly-friendly buddy since asparagus is low in fat and calories.

Ingredients:

Instruction

Butter and oil

1.

Asparagus, tough end

fry the asparagus tips for a few minutes until tender. Remove and

discarded and cut into

set aside.

1-inch pieces, tip reserved

2.

Shallot, sliced

but still brightly green. Then stir in the spinach and pour over the

Garlic, crushed

stock and oat milk. Bring to the boil and use a hand blender to

Spinach

emulsify your soup. Season and add water to loosen if needed.

Vegetable stock

3.

Oat milk

cream. The soup goes well with sourdough bread.

Olive oil and cream

Voilà, 10 minutes for a homemade savory soup, amazing enough

(optional for drizzling)

to incite you to cook?

Melt the butter and oil in a saucepan or pot until foaming the

Add the rest of asparagus, shallot and garlic, cook to soften

Garnish with the asparagus tips, drizzle with olive oil and

- Van Trang Le 12