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).