Friday 31 October 2014

Ship ahoy!

Through the turbulent oceans and horrible sea monsters my earthly belonings have just landed into the port of Helsinki. 1 full month ahead of the original pessimistic schedule. I finally get to sleep in my own bed next week! \o/


Wednesday 22 October 2014

Final relocation summary (part 1 of 3) - List of accomplishments

This is the first of the 3 part blog series listing final summary of the 2 year excursion. First entry lists all the new skills and achievements I ended up with. The second installment into the series discusses about things that I am missing from Singapore. Final topic (potentially the very last entry into this blog altogether (snif)) will be about things that I do NOT miss.  

Achievements / trophies / outcomes 

  • 3 ice cream bar mayorships and level 5 mall rat badge in Foursquare (I had to list the most cherished achievement first. I'll have serious trouble making sure I stay on the top in the upcoming months/years -- Actually I think I can. Foursquare did totally stupid update into their previously cool app and removed this gamification aspect completely.)
  • Plenty of gained experiences from living and working abroad. Working in a massive conglomerate, working abroad was not so big of a shock. The corporate culture actually runs much deeper than working differences of various nationalities. Having worked in a truly global role with worldwide visibility makes it so much harder to get used to regional level business after this. 
  • A great group of colleagues to have worked with. A few new true friends in addition. 
  • Further improved English skills (I remember in the beginning it was half scary to find myself thinking in English during weekend).
  • Enough vitamin D to survive couple of dark Finnish winters.
  • New color into the map of visited countries: Philippines, Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia (and Ireland). Also number of revisits to countries I had been to before, but more stamps into the passport: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and US. Number of the countries visited as of today: 45.
  • Some money left over from very friendly taxation percentage
Also gained new ability to stick to shadows to avoid
scorching sun. In the picture there is still the best place available
to wait for the pedestrian light to change.
This skill will surely come in demand in Finland!
  • Two amazing kids who have had their first true dip into global world and understanding how very similar yet fascinatingly different we all are over the various country borders. Both of them speak fluent English and some Mandarin to top that off. Both of them have learned to swim there as well.
  • 80 odd blog posts documenting the course of past 2 years for 3000+ page views globally.
  • 100+ kilometers of running away from Zombie hordes in this cool augmented reality app. For the record though: I never acclimatized properly to be comfortably running outside during day time. 
  • Successfully completing one of the sixweeks.com projects (200 situps done, 20 pullups &  100 push-ups still to come!) 
  • 2 playlists of commuting music. One list for each year.
  • Full set of furniture which unfortunately ended up being needed after the home coming. My earthly goods are floating somewhere in the Suez channel at the time of writing this.  
  •  
  • Learned little bit more than just basics of tennis. I can occasionally hit one mean forehand. 
  • Mastered the skill of chitchatting about weather when the only real change is whether it is very hot or really hot (once again I remember that in the beginning the very first weather related discussion made no sense whatsoever to me). 
  • 926 PowerPoint files and 745 Excel files on my laptop hard disk drive. Honestly (perhaps unfortunately) majority of these are created by me! All these files got deleted during standard disk wipe on my last day at the office. Perhaps I need to clarify that I practice pretty nihilistic version control system, which leaves a wake of copies of the same file.

  • Life long immunity to one specific serotype of dengue fever.


There are most probably several other achievements, which I don't remember right now. Thus perhaps these are the most important ones. (EDIT: OK, just a few more additions to the list)

Friday 10 October 2014

Reverse culture shock

Surreal. That's the feeling when I am once again walking the dog around the same neighbourhood I have been living in since 2001 (with the exception of the Singapore getaway). Everything is pretty much the same with only superficial changes. Same shops, same restaurants, same schools, same kindergartens, same parks. Same cold, wet weather. As if I never left. I was away only for 2 years, but it is pretty amazing this dreamlike quality when  thinking about past 24 months.

Here are some of the quick observations from the first days before I end up not noticing them anymore:

On the very first day I encountered what could probably only be labeled as an old hobo, who seemed to have peed all over himself just a little bit. He was looking for a fight near the subway station. Luckily not with me. This was around 10 o'clock in the morning. Suffice to say you would never ever see a sight like that in Singapore. I wonder if quick corrective caning would decrease (or perhaps only further increase) the aggressive behaviour over here? The hobo was dressed in black. Like practically everybody else. Perhaps few people have dark gray jacket on. Or dark brown if they are very expressive.

My phone (new OnePlus One!) was struggling to hang on to LTE-network, but was dropping to 3G (!) speeds in the suburbs of Töölö, which could still be considered to be part of downtown Helsinki. This feels quite out of place coming from a area with complete countrywide (albeit miniscule country at that) coverage for full LTE speeds. Apparently I was almost the only one enjoying my 3G connection in the bus. I remember wondering few months ago if 80% of my fellow HKIers would be fiddling their phones in public transports by now.


Was it always like this: only old, ugly and dirty cars on streets? Where are the occasional Lambos, Ferraris and Maseratis? Then again I did get my first Tesla sighting in the streets of Helsinki! Of course I could easily get a ride with one of those German made cars for a fee. I was planning to take my kids to nearby National Park of Nuuksio to marvel the Autumn colours, but the trip would have costed me 70 euros -- each way. I guess we can enjoy the absolutely beautiful display of nature in the city parks just as well.

While on the topic of cost of living, I happily renewed my electricity contract for about 200 euros for the whole year. Also 20 euros a month for a mobile phone subscription with limitless calls and txts and 50 gigs of LTE traffic sounds inexpensive to me (as long as LTE works). Finally home broadband for 350 Mbps connection which costs 20 euros a month is truly a bargain anywhere.

Finally, I am afraid Singapore has ruined my taste buds beyond repair. Japanese food tasted bland. Nepalese wasn't really spicy even with warning texts on the menu. Not to mention eating home cooked family dinner. I solved the immediate concern with a bottle of chilli sauce as my hidden weapon. Now I only regret that I didn't purchase that special chilli sauce from Katong Laksa. However, I am compelled to add that I had truly spectacular sautéed wild boar (*) as part of the Autumn game menu in a local restaurant.

Welcome back me!

PS. For all you Finnish speakers out there there was a similar list of findings shared when Shanghai correspondent of the local newspaper returned back home.

(*) Mission accomplished!