Greetings from Winter Wonderland

A modest 60 degree difference in temperature provided a warm welcome when coming over to Finland for Christmas celebrations. I didn't bother packing in any Winter clothes when relocating thus the weather felt a bit chilly in a tee shirt.
Similar warm sign of coming home was delivered By a Finnish flight attendant on board the Finnair flight. He accidentally poured apple Juice on my arm and sweater. The only apology offered was a muffled "Oops".
Despite the cold weather or perhaps due to it, the scenery looked absolutely wonderful! Snow covered all the trees like sugar frosting.

Approving nod

The nerd in me really appreciates the fact that SG government has rolled out free fast Internet access all over the city in major public places. Then again in a country this size it's relatively easy to ensure total 4G coverage as well. Anyhoo, free wlan is truly a measure of civilization.

Bona Fide tour guide

During my recent visit to one of the most popular Hawker Centers I was appointed a FourSquare Badge commemorating my journey to become a street credible tour guide for the folks who have already visited me and the ones who are still to come over. 

Nothing brings out the Christmas spirit like bagpipes

Yet another quite surreal experience. Today afternoon the whole department went out for a nice Christmas lunch. Starting with the fact that the whole concept of Christmas and Winter feel so much out of place over here under constant sun shine and 30+ degree weather. So there were we in a globally dispersed crowd eating happily excellent Silver Fish Fried Rice (the actual fish and not the wingless insect by the same name, hopefully!) and black pepper onion beef, when in comes a 3 man Asian boy band in kilts who are obviously playing bagpipes to celebrate the season. Even though to my unacquired hearing (you can't really say that, can you?) all the bagpipe songs sound exactly the same, I was actually able to distinguish that they were playing a medley of the original Christmas classics like Jingle Bells. How wintery (yet another made up word for you) is that?

In a hole in the ground there lived a...

One has to wonder what is really the point in relocating to eastern time zones, if not to have ultimate bragging rights on seeing all the big movies good 6 hours before they are released in Finland? However laws of karma apparently doesn't treat well cheaters like me. The Hobbit is being released one day ahead in Europe compared to Asia. I need to try to settle for some minor boasting like seeing the movie not only in HFR 3D, but in Imax , which has still not landed in Finland. That and the sheer hilarious scene of numbers of asian interpretations of Gandalf around me.

Happy 95th Birthday Finland

To celebrate Finnish Independence Day here at the office I just shared the following post from my facebook wall with my global colleagues. Now they have a better understanding what I have to put up with when it´s constantly over 30+ degrees outside. Oh, poor me.

+15 °C, Spanish wear caps, gloves and winter coats, Finns are sunbathing.
+10 °C, French desperately try to get their central heating on. Finns plant flowers.
+5 °C, Italian cars won't start. Finns drive with convertibles.
0 °C, Pure water freezes. Water in river Vantaa thickens a bit.
−5 °C, First people are found frozen in California. Finnish midsummer festival ends.
−10 °C, Scottish turn the heat on in their houses. Finns start to use long-sleeve shirts.
−20 °C, Swedes stay indoors. Finns are having last barbecue before winter.
−30 °C, Half of the Greek people have frozen to death. Finns start to dry their laundry indoors.
−50 °C, Polar bears evacuate North Pole. Finnish army starts it's winter training.
−70 °C, Siberian people are moving to Moscow. Finns are furious since the Koskenkorva booze can't be stored outdoors anymore.
−273 °C, Absolute zero. Finns admit that it is quite cold outside.
−300 °C, Hell freezes over. Finland wins the football World Cup.

Wake up and smell the coffee

Weirdest thing ever: having just arrived at work and filling in my water bottle for the day, I noticed a pack of coffee on my colleagues desk. And not just any coffee, but a fresh package of Finnish coffee.

My Indian colleague had received it from a friend who had been to Canada of all the places. He had absolutely no idea how the coffee had traveled around the world. 

It's worth mentioning that this was not coffee to be exported, but a standard pack of Juhla Mokka, brewed in Helsinki with Finnish only label text on the packaging. 

There we savoured the moment with homely smell of fresh coffee and me explaining to anybody caring to listen what a nation of coffee afficionados Finland really is. 

What a fine city

It makes sense not to transfer your Durian fruits in a bus.

Close encounters with local wild life

I started getting pressure on expediting my posting frequency, thus finally here's the blog post concerning the local fauna. Today we happen to have a day off from work in the middle of the week to celebrate Deepavali or festival of lights. This is one of the benefits of living in a society which embraces multiple religions (in October we had Hari Raya Haji and next month obviously Christmas -- no need for wiki link for that one). So I have had plenty of time to do important things like visiting local IMAX theater, earn additional FourSquare badges (lvl 2 mall rat & trainspotter) and also documenting the my four+ legged room mates.

The apartment I have rented is located on the 2nd floor of a 22 storey building. During the first nights I realized that in addition to having some privacy from the nearby palm trees there is another added benefit from living near to the ground which is having the chance of meeting local wild life right here in the convenient confinements of my own home.

The occasional chirping sound I bestowed originally on some small crickets. Though I wondered how come it really sounds as if the chirping is coming from within the apartment and not outside. This jungle noise I put up with first couple of nights. Probably on the third night when I was just about to go to sleep I found the actual culprit. It was not a cricket but a translucent lizard which had found its way under my pillow! We looked at each other into the eyes for second and then she wiggled off the way lizards tend to slither quickly.

I left my bedroom and started to wonder what are people supposed to do with lizards crawling on their bed. Gathering courage I got myself a set of paper towels and decided to capture the little feller and show her (I expect it to be a she) out through the way of balcony. Quite quickly I realized that it is not likely that I'll capture her easily. Chirpy (as I dubbed her) is rather quick and can access places where me & my paper towel armament cannot reach. Also I started to wonder whether I could really hold the thing in the paper towel even if I captured her. She ran into my bathroom and decided to close the door behind her and leave it be for that particular night.

Through out the night I could hear Chirpy singing away in the locked bathroom (since then I have come to realize that doors don't really hold lizards as they can fit through underneath the door). In the morning I hesitantly went into the bathroom to take a shower. I turned on the light and try to pinpoint my new room mate using mirrors on the walls. And there she was. Slithered merrily across the walls as I had to enter shower. 

Later in the office the localites taught me that house geckos are very much part of living on the equator. These guys have actually been here way before humans so it's really us on their turf. Also I learned that geckos eat ants and spiders and thus are rather helpful than actual pests. Which there are also in these parts of the world: with the first cockroach sighting I decided not to adhere to live and let live/you were here first -philosophy, but bought an effective pest trap. Also since then I have seen my share of rats in the vicinity of the house (not inside luckily), big fat snails and during the dusk there are number of fruit bats flying over any occasional swimming pool user. I prefer not to meet any of the 108 species of snakes living in Singapore, like this one captured at a close by metro station.

 As a matter of fact I just heard the familiar "tsirp, tsirp, tsirp" sound coming from behind the nearby curtains. It must be Chirpy joining me for evening snack!

 

Chirpy AKA Sirkku

Day in the life of a Singaporean

To mark the occasion of having lived one full month in Singapore I would like to share a YouTube clip which epitomizes a wealth of Singaporean behaviours such as

• Commuting
• Pushing into public transport without letting others come out first (example of Kiasu)
• Working
• Reserving a place in a food court with packet of tissues (I wonder if it is up to me to teach these folks  that the system would actually work better for everybody if no one reserved a place, but seats would be filled with FCFS-basis)
• Visiting a mall just to get cooled off
• Hunting for sales & promotions
• And all of these presented in completely understandable Singlish (at least with some help from captioning)

I haven't forgot my promise to blog about nasty native fauna, but I have yet failed to take a picture of my beasty room mate (jpeg or it didn't happen, right). 

Air locked inside the office

I have received requests to share findings and feelings from the work perspective. This episode provides all the fun and excitement that goes on within office premises in Singapore.

Now having successfully raised the expectations, let me share a secret: office life in a multinational company doesn't really change that much from one country to another. On the contrary, it keeps surprising me again and again how overwhelming can be the power of a shared global corporate culture: Everybody speaks the same language (No, that is not English, but acronym infested Nerdish), they all have a place in the same organizational structure that is replicated in each country, they share the same concerns to a minute detail, there are too many back to back meetings, they share the same tools and processes (need to add that they all have the same warm feelings about processes).

In my line of work I probably shouldn't be as pleasantly astonished how internal IT can actually work on a global level. But I am: same badge works on the doors once given accesses in a matter of seconds, laptop picks up the same WLAN and starts to work directly, printers are all accessible through the same system and as mentioned all the tools used are indeed the same (although finally having a freedom from claiming my hours -- how sweet is that!)

Obviously there are also differences. There really aren't that many occasions where I would get to speak Finnish. To the extent that I found myself thinking in English also outside the office. I work in a truly multinational team with colleagues from India, UK, Australia, China, US and naturally Singapore. We venture out for lunch much later than back home where there are people standing orderly in a queue waiting already before the cafeteria opens at 11 AM. The security seems to be also tighter around here. Accessing a bathroom that is shared with another company in the same floor of the office building is a space craft air lock type of an experience with interlocking doors which cannot be opened at the same time (I just anticipate the first time I will go to the bathroom and realize that I have left my badge on the table <-- this is the excitement part promised in the first chapter). 

Finally there is the matter of number of hours being spent at the office in a day. There was a recent study published in Europe which demonstrated that Finnish people are among the group that spends the least time in the office compared to other fellow European office workers. In Singapore the tendency seems to be more of an Asian approach with number of hours at the office being a value in itself. Once again the company culture seems to have a veto right with the focus on the outcome in all the countries.



As a teaser for the next episode: it will feature various dangerous animals which lurk around when I'm sleeping.

As chatty as you can get

Gotta comment on my own posting from yesterday: Talk about chatty taxi drivers! Today I was driven by an elderly Chinese gentleman who talked and talked like there was no end to it during the whole trip from work to a potential school for a campus visit. This guy just couldn't stop talking and laughing out loud (LOLing?) almost about every possible thing there is.

It is not really customary here to tip (which I really appreciate), but I decided that this was such a fun ride that I proposed him to keep any change from notes of intentionally too large denomination. But he didn't want to hear about any of that. On the contrary it was he who insisted on actually giving me money from his own wallet so that the fare was lower than the meter reading!! Suffice to say, it was me who reminded him to turn the meter on in the first place after we had left my office building. He forgot to turn it on while busy talking to me. He said the lower fare was because I seem such a stand up guy for paying the effort to willingly integrate into Singaporean society through learning my new surroundings and reading the local newspaper (vs. subscribing to news from home country). I wonder how he got those tidbits as he didn't let me do any of the talking...

Totally recalling the original initial feelings

Commuting to work this morning -- by bus mind you -- I picked up interesting comment from morning radio show: "PIE is congested, affecting TPE and quite possibly ECP". Singapore is very fond of TLAs (three letter acronyms). The list of acronyms in SG seems endless. Over the last few days I have come across at least  MOM, HBD, MRT, DBS, ERP, GST, NRIC, EP and also the names of the highways as mentioned over the radio.  The plethora of acronyms borders on the extend of acronym usage within one specific global IT conglomerate.

It's not only acronyms, but having visited Singapore previously on private trips, there are number of apparent things which didn't surprise me anymore. In terms of comprehensiveness, I try to memorize some of the very first impressions I had on my previous visits. I am not planning to rephrase wikipedia entry of Singapore as such, but emphasizing on some of my original initial feelings.

Singapore seems to be a model society when it comes to harmoniously integrating different ethnicities and religions. There is probably more to this when digging in deeper into the society, but the first impression is definitely a positive one. On any given street one can spot a hindu temple right next to a mosque right next to a catholic church. There are total of 4 official languages used (Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) in addition to English being shared by all groups, which seemingly increases internal unity among the population. The accent of local English takes a while to get used to, but level of English is very good compared to any other Asian country I have visited. For example all taxi drivers speak English -- which is not the case for example in New York! Taxi drivers tend to be often actually a very chatty bunch of people. I just got an extensive marketing speech for Asus padphone during my latest Taxi trip.

One thing that cannot be left unnoticed on the very first trip to Singapore is the amount of trees, flowers and overall greenery left in between the buildings. Too often in the concrete jungles of any major metropolitan cities the trees are strictly confided to their own areas within fenced parks, but over here the city planners have had the sense of not hiding the tropical nature of the geographical location of the country. Just for example the East Coast Parkway (aforementioned ECP) -- highway leading from the airport to the city -- is surrounded by umbrella trees giving shade and cut in half with endless bushes and flower beds.

Another apparent finding is the general cleanliness of the surroundings. One doesn't really find any rubbish or trash whatsoever thrown on ground anywhere within the city. There is not a one broken public property (like a bus stop or trash cans) in sight. After visiting a public park in Berlin during one weekend, I have seen the other end of the same axis. There are most likely couple of explanations for this: primary one being the draconian nature of law interpretation in the country. The punishments for any devious activity no matter how minor in nature (like jaywalking, littering, driving a car with black smoke coming out of the exhausting pipe...) can be very severe from extensive fines to public caning and eventually to capital punishment. So as long as I'm able to resist my urges of random acts of vandalism like spray painting over a diplomats car, I am happily enjoying very safe and clean surroundings. But in addition to fear of punishment, I believe, one main motivation of upholding to these virtues is the positive feedback loop: as long as everybody puts out their cigarettes in the provided ash trays nobody wants to be the first one to start littering the grounds.

Finally I could go on and on about the first impressions around different cuisines served around here, but I'll save that as a completely separate blog entry -- perhaps multiple entries.

First day @ office

Even though 5 hour time difference did not mess up my head too badly, in the morning did not feel adventurous enough to start finding my way to office with public transportation, but jumped into a taxi. The hotel I ended up in is located far away from everything else but my office -- still it takes 15 minutes with a taxi to get there. Taxis are relatively cheap mode of transportation compared to the way things are at dear old home country. However expect to get myself orientated around public transportation the soonest.


Realized pretty quickly that with wearing a suit I was way overdressed. Not only doesn't the local business attire expect a jacket but also it’s unbearably hot outside with a jacket on. Inside I could do with a jacket actually because the aircon is tuned all the way up to a setting resembeling the weather during mid-winter in Finland.

As part of a major global company, there is a process (or typically several) for everything, including for relocation. There were number of colleagues from HR department running me through different forms and practicalities. By the looks of it, I'm hardly the first one to go through these activities.

As for the actual work activities, the relocation practicalities have been fortunately taken into account. Therefore, for the first 2 weeks I will be having the needed freedom to run on different errands.

Kicking things off with succulent shrimps

A challenge was set forth for me to blog my experiences regarding backing my stuff and relocating from wintery Finland to sunny Singapore (hence the title of the blog). I have been pondering on the challenge for a week and finally realized that if I don't start to document the peculiarities during the first weeks, I will loose my childlike sense of wonder sooner rather than later. Thus here we go...

Great Adventure is about to be embarked, yet I cannot shake the initial feeling of discomfort. The final words of my 6 year old son, just before I left my old home, were “Please hold me tightly, Dad, just one last time”. I will migrate myself first and my family follows me after a few months when I have settled in. But I have to wonder what have I just thrown myself into?

Then again on the very first evening dipping into hotel's infinity pool way above the roofs of nearby buildings and watching planes coming in closer and rolling out their landing gear almost at the touching distance makes me feel that I’m not in Kansas anymore -- or in Helsinki for that matter.

First experiment into eating out was obviously a positive one. But then again is there any real possibility for an epic failure when it comes to food in a city of whose habitants’ favourite pastime is eating out. It has also been said that there are absolutely no reasons for not eating well in Singapore. On the first evening it was Peranakan cuisine (let me google that for you: “Peranakan or Nonya cuisine combines Chinese, Malay and other influences into a unique blend”). Amazingly succulent shrimps with aromatic and spicy paste served on a bamboo leaf. Good stuff. This is, indeed, a start of an adventure.