Closing in on half year mark

Well, whaddya know! I just started my 6th month living and working in Singapore. Funny how time flies when having fun in the office, basking in the sun and relaxing in the pool.

Global content owners stepping on MY toes

In the previous entry there were the devious toilet seats out to get me, this time I am bitching about protectionistic content providers guarding their prehistoric turf. I am a prime example of consumer who isn't fixed to particular geographic position, but would still expect the global companies treat me as the same customer now matter from where I happened to be accessing their services. Going into 2013 the corporations are STILL not really ready for this new era of geo-less digital consumers.

I am clearly pestered by my own inner morale code dictating me actually to be willing to pay for products, service or content that I consume. Life would be so much easier right now without my too self aware consciousness making me jump hurdles whenever trying to get access to content like movies, tv, music, comics, magazine subscriptions, books in a way that is completely legal and just.

Case in point 1: Last year I bought Google Nexus 7 and I am loving the device. At least up until when I found out all the cool content I am missing. Over here in Singapore (and all over the place outside US borders judging from the global nerd rage followed by every single Google Play announcement in Google+), Google Play is but an empty shell serving only the applications. I so much wanted to buy 2nd season of Walking Dead for my enjoyment when going on a cross continent trip. However all Google said is "No can do. None of this glorious content is meant for you". Out of curiosity I found means to make it so that I appeared as if I was accessing the internet store from US soil. My Nexus was all of a sudden a cornucopia (Yes, I had to google that up) of content both free and for a fee. Whole Walking Dead S2 was there up for grabs for a nominal fee which I would be more than glad to pay to ease the pain of 12 hour flights. However my devious tactics didn't work all the way, even if I was browsing the US store, Google not so politely refused to take my dirty Singapore dollars -- or Finnish euros for that matter. And furthermore I was eventually thrown out of the store in an internet equivalent of being thrown out of a pub head first, by locking my google account due to "suspicious activity". That was pretty painful experience as I have ended up centralizing most of my digital existence behind that one account.

Case in point 2: Apparently I wasn't going to give in so easily to the temptation of more easier and not to mention free alternatives. The next time I had a case of sudden on-demand craving for quality content I accessed the online Movie catalogue within Xbox Live service. Of course in Singapore the Xbox Live would be as empty as Google Play, but I had shipped my Finnish Xbox over here and with my Finnish account was still able to browse all the cool content. Once finally sitting on a couch with popcorn in hand, being ready to start watching first Harry Potter movie with my family and pressing play, I get now so familiar greeting: "Bug off. There is nothing to be seen here in the region where you are currently living. Migrate your sorry-ass back to Finland". Having promised a movie night, I went to local mall, where they have the nearest movie rental place. But to my surprise they had stopped physically renting blu-rays due to "advent of online digital rental competition".

These are only 2 examples of my recent battles. I hardly think it is that Google or Amazon or Netflix or Spotify does not want my money, but it goes beyond that. The official solutions to my previous examples have been to either subscribe to expensive Fox Movies Premium HD -channel package from my cable provider (who wouldn't run Walking Dead season 2 anymore as they are already on S3) or buy a physical copy of the complete collectors set of HP movies for a ridiculous price (as they don't sell individual movies anymore). Digital distribution would be stepping on the toes of various parties in the ecosystem. However the protectionistic system of the content right owners in an interconnected world is so painstakingly out dated business model and further fighting against the change is only driving masses to the sources of once again easier and less costly options.

An interesting observation into all of this was offered by a colleague of mine (who has US address and US credit card to access all the content through iTunes): Asian business culture just is not customer centric. It is more supply chain centric. Customer demand for goods does not necessarily reflect to supply, but actually supplier providing a good value for certain goods drives the buying behaviour of customers for example in a grocery store. Another example is a local restaurant offering set meals through having a full low cost "assembly line" of putting together that particular meal in the kitchen. And there you have a western customer, who has the misconception that customer would be always right and wanting to replace rice with fries. That just doesn't comply in the supply driven process. That actually explains a number of run ins I have had where I have tried to swim upstream against a process.

Quirky motion sensor AKA set your toilets to stun

Quick personal gripe for this lovely Wednesday morning: It hardly comes as a surprise that in this fine city failing to flush a toilet after use is yet another punishable offence (modest 150 SGD compared to say riding your bike through an underpass, which forces you to cough up a cool 1000 dollars if you get caught). Thankfully opportunities for this form of improper conduct has been prevented by installing infrared motion detectors in most if not all public toilets. These detectors practically flush the toilet for you...

...Provided that they practically work in the first place. In some toilets like in our office they have set the detector on extra stringent mode, flushing the toilet repeatedly even during use as a pre-emptive measure to make sure any fines avoided. I can only attest that it can be rather unpleasant (yet strangely refreshing) experience.

Live long and have a prosperous year of the snake

Chinese New Year is the biggest public holiday event in Singapore at least by counting the number of continuous days off. The actual new year falls this year on Saturday and Sunday and for fairness sake both Monday and Tuesday are days off as well. Singapore does actually surprisingly well in the comparison of number of national holidays during a year.

I took a trip to Chinatown in the new years eve. It was crowded but not the extend I was expecting. It was still possible to navigate through the crowds and find a free table in a restaurant (excellent soft shell crabs in chilly sauce). Chinatown looked very nice while bathing in the yellow and red light from all the lanterns.

For an outsider I took notice of what seemed like a fixation with wealth when it comes the beginning of the new year. People hand over mandarins to each other and buy small kumquat trees into their homes. The reason being in the yellow color of the fruit which symbolizes all the gold to be captured during the year. Similarly there are significant sales towards end of the year and also for the first customers in the beginning of the year -- expected to bring good fortune going forward.

Following the local customs, this morning I handed over red packets to my kids -- once again with new dollar notes inside them to enforce prosperity in the coming year.

May you all find good fortune and happiness during the year of the snake!  

(Apparently I was not the only one thinking about another person with fixation for prosperity.

I found this image from this blog)

Go Huskies

Today marks the first day at the new school for my older child. This is probably one of the biggest practical changes for relocating families. After all I continue in the same company working more or less in the same business context and as an adult (really, am I?) I can work consciously to adapt to the new culture. But for my son it is a new country, new food, new language, new school, new friends, new teachers, new practicalities and all of that pouring over him on the first day. Then again kids possess this amazing ability to adapt into new settings and as a sponge to suck in all new influences.

With hindsight it proved to be a quite an excellent decision to have my son enroll into English speaking day care and later on to pre-school. So the language barrier will be so much lower to begin with, even if he was participating in a Finnish speaking school just before migrating over. But then again up until now there has always been either other kids or some teachers who have been able to assist him in Finnish when necessary.

Even if he doesn't admit it or even realize it himself, he is in for a treat of a lifetime. It will not only be English that he will be engulfed by. Him attending Canadian International School means that he will learn the basics of French and in addition he will have his first Mandarin lesson starting on Wednesday. Furthermore in the school there are kids representing almost 70 different nationalities currently. So it is going to be truly international learning experience to prepare him to be a real global citizen.

My little boy looked so brave albeit clearly anxious standing there in his brand new official red Physical Education uniform and wearing a Spider-Man backpack in the school yard this morning. Uniform wasn't at all the only thing that we needed to stock up for the new school. There are all kinds of fees attached: enrollment fee, confirmation fee, semester fee, facility fee... Coming from Finland the whole conception of privately run schools is quite foreign. They are clearly aiming to run a profitable business.

On a final note I went with my son to the school for an orientation visit last week Thursday. They mentioned that they will be assessing my son's performance in English over the course of next couple of weeks to determine whether he would need Extra English Lessons (for additional fee of course). As we were quickly visiting the ELL class in session, I learned from the teacher that the kids in there were just learning to tell stories using the F-words! Apparently she meant words like Fox, Fire, Five, Fix and so forth.

Individual among masses

I happened to possess very common first name. According to PRC (Finnish Population Register Center that is -- Not the PRC that Asians would expect) I have 56 426 namesakes, which is quite a lot when comparing to the total population of 5,4 million in Finland. Especially common the name has been for men born in 70s and 80s.

In my work context this commonness of my first name was emphasized due to disproportionate relationship between men and women in my line of nerdy work and also due to the fact that most of my colleagues have been born in notorious time frame mentioned above. This has resulted in more than every tenth colleague in my department being my namesake! I often joked that proper name must have been a recruitment criteria. Just before relocating, the final nail on the coffin of my identity crisis was realization that I supposedly had a doppelgänger portraying the role of Dr. Who from a particular season.

Fast forward to the Little Red Dot under the equator. Here I was awarded a completely new digital identity within the corporate systems and my Finnish identity was laid to rest for the duration of my assignment. In practice I  received for example a new external email address. This new identity is in the form of firstname@company.sg -- no need to separate with last name as I am the only and actually the first of my kind working in this location!

I needed to come all the way here to find my long lost identity. I am currently the odd one out of my department. There is actually only one other European that I know of among my whole extend group of colleagues around. It is funny that for example the security guy in our office building occasionally walks around the floors and every single time he happily greets me with my first name. They really didn't do that in Finland, even though just by guessing they would have been correct every tenth time.

However I have found a new group of names I am being referred to. Occasionally when I have booked a taxi (there is a cool little taxi booking app, which actually shows the geographic location of the booked taxi once the booking has been confirmed), the driver looks at me funny and wants to verify that it really was me who booked the taxi. They all say that they were expecting a Japanese woman because of my first name...

Finnish cultural imperialism pt 2

Back home at SG and here I come across yet another weird example of globalization. I picked up the ice cream in the picture below from local 7-eleven downstairs to my office.

I truly have trouble understanding what sense does it make to ship ice cream from Finland to Singapore. Especially with very standard product by a global conglomerate. Then again it does keep any potentially dawning home sickness at bay.

 

PS. In case you are wondering (like me after rereading this entry after almost 2 years) why this is called part 2: here was the first sign of Finns taking over the world.