Well, I got home from work today to notice that my wife's bicycle has been stolen from where its locked up under our apartment. I was beginning to wonder if everything was OK because I haven't had a locked bicycle stolen from my home for over a year now.
Add to this that the down stairs locker compartments have been broken into several times (and you need a key to even get access to that area) with the locks cut with a cutting tool and you might get the picture that Finland is not really any different to New York, London or Sydney. But hey, I'm living out in the "honest countryside" not in "the bad and corrupt" city of Helsinki (as the local blind leaders would have you believe).
Its not just my neighborhood either, as one of the fellows I share the train ride into Helsinki with daily is an "intellectual property lawyer" (so another one of those well educated people I seem to be biasing towards here) and he's had his place robbed last week. He's now installing an alarm system.
Now it gets funnier as I mentioned to him that I thought that an Alarm System would really need a feature where it sends and SMS to your phone because noone would give two hoots about his alarm going off.
"no no ... sure that would be the case in London, but not here" he replied.
Well funny enough on Tuesday he told me he sat and watched while some kid stole the brief case of a fellow passenger on the train and he didn't do a thing. Sure, he said he was shocked that it happened before his eyes ... but did he do anything? Nope.
Strangely he thinks that his neighbours (whom he doesn't know) will bother to do something about his house alarm ...
what can you say to that? Well I've learnt that the first rule of Finland club is ... so I said
sure ...
At no stage have I ever said that Australia is "Gods last Haven for honest men", I'm as quick to say as the next man "keep your eyes on that" but I get mighty tired of having Finnish attitudes and prejudices about foreign lands being second rate when I've had more stuff stolen off me in the last 2 years than in the previous 35.
Ah ... I know ... it must have been a Russian or a Gypsie (is what a countryside Finn would probably say to this)
no ni
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