Funny things in Finland: wintertime inventiveness

Saturday 11 December 2010

wintertime inventiveness

Finns can be quite inventive and engineering skilled people. Take my friend Markus, he is an engineer and somone who enjoys winter sports. Combine the two with excess time to think about things with a few spare parts hanging around and you get stuff like this:

a 2 stroke powered snow board.

its a piece of genius isn't it?

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Why is this here

Prependum: I have not really addressed this blog for some time now, and while I've come and gone a few times I no longer feel "shocked" by the differences in Finland. Now this is just a historical piece, it may or many not help others in their adjustment.

This blog serves to help me to come to terms with the differences between life here and life where I'm used to. I recommend you read my introduction to get more details.

It may as well serve to give some sort of view of Australia to Finns who read this in understanding what Australia might be like by deduction or inference.

Essentially the problem of being a foreigner is that things which you may expect to be normal, may not be. This causes some frustration, but when you combine this with the reaction of locals to your expression of frustration you just end up more frustrated. Cos the locals often don't have a clue about the thing you're explaining and thus don't really know why you'd expect to find it.

Finding things like:
a service station which has a air hose to top up your tyres (because mostly its just fuel dispensing automats), an Electronics shop, a place which does a wheel alignment on your car, decent olives, nice coffee, a delicatessen, ruled line stationary (not checker style for maths), decent pens ....

Obviously its easiest in some ways if you come from somewhere of a lower standard of living to a place of a higher standard of living. Meaning you're less likely to find things missing which you expect.

After living in Japan (Tokyo), South Korea (country town south of Seoul) and India I didn't expect Finland to be such a backward step lacking in (or locating in a strange place) the western or developed country things I am used to. While I'm used to having to ferret around for getting my self organised and finding what's what when moving to a new country Finland seems to have challenged me more than any other place.

I hope you find it entertaining at least.

Funny things
in Finland

Saturday 11 December 2010

wintertime inventiveness

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